Creating a Digital Aristotle: A Computerized Knowledge System for Scientists and Students; Paul G. Allen's Vulcan Inc. Launches Second Phase of Research Initiative.Business Editors SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 12, 2004 Aristotle, the ancient Greek Noun 1. Ancient Greek - the Greek language prior to the Roman Empire Greek, Hellenic, Hellenic language - the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European family of languages teacher, scientist and philosopher, had an extraordinary command of all the scientific disciplines of his day, as well as an ability to teach that knowledge to his students in a way they could understand. Today, the sheer volume of knowledge existing in the world precludes a modern-day human Aristotle, but current knowledge systems and technologies may one day fulfill this role. Vulcan Inc., parent company for Paul G. Allen's investments and philanthropy philanthropy, the spirit of active goodwill toward others as demonstrated in efforts to promote their welfare. The term is often used interchangeably with charity. , today announced phase II of Project Halo Project Halo, is a project funded by Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures. The project was initially led by Oliver Roup and Noah Friedland but is currently led by Mark Greaves, a former DARPA Program Manager. , a staged, long-term research and development initiative that aims to develop a "Digital Aristotle" -- an application capable of answering novel questions and solving advanced problems in a wide range of scientific disciplines. The Digital Aristotle is being developed with a focus on two primary functions: as a tutor capable of instructing and assessing students in the sciences, and as a research assistant with broad, interdisciplinary skills to help scientists in their work. At the core of Halo's knowledge formulation approach is a document-rooted methodology, where domain experts -- chemists, biologists and physicists -- use existing documents, such as textbooks, to create knowledge modules. Tying knowledge modules to documents establishes the scope, context, and type of questions they can answer, as well as the depth and resolution of their answers. The goal of Phase II is to determine the feasibility of building such tools within a reasonable timeframe and the likelihood of their adoption by the scientific community. The six-month pilot phase of Project Halo, which concluded in May 2003, demonstrated that state-of-the-art "knowledge representation and reasoning" technology is capable of producing computer applications that answer novel questions in Advance Placement (AP) chemistry -- and also provide readable, domain-appropriate justifications for those answers. The project also identified two closely related challenges: (1) knowledge and question formulation requires highly specialized and expensive personnel (knowledge engineers), which pushes the development cost to about $10,000 per page; and (2) most of the evaluated system failures reflected insufficient expertise in AP Chemistry by the knowledge engineers creating the system's knowledge modules. Halo Phase II will address these two issues directly by developing technology that will allow domain experts to formulate knowledge with decreasing dependence on knowledge engineers, and to pose questions and problems to the knowledge systems. Vulcan believes that achieving those goals will reduce the cost of knowledge formulation to levels comparable to textbook development, and will encourage scientists and educators to build an expanding body of machine-processable knowledge that will facilitate the Digital Aristotle's role as a tutor and research assistant. The 30-month Phase II effort will be undertaken in three stages: (1) a six-month design stage, (2) a 15-month implementation stage, and (3) a nine-month refinement stage. Three competing teams have been contracted by Vulcan, each with world-class skills and technology in five primary areas: knowledge representation and reasoning, knowledge acquisition, and intelligent interfaces, including natural language understanding, usability and system integration. Two comprehensive user-driven evaluations, covering selected portions of the AP exams in biology, chemistry and physics (B), will be used to assess, guide and validate the research. For more information, visit: www.projecthalo.com. The Project Halo Phase II team includes: Team SRI International (company) SRI International - One of the world's largest contract research firms. Founded in 1946 in conjuction with Stanford University as the Stanford Research Institute, they later became fully independent and were incorporated as a non-profit organisation under U.S. , which includes members from the University of Texas at Austin “University of Texas” redirects here. For other system schools, see University of Texas System. The University of Texas at Austin (often referred to as The University of Texas, UT Austin, UT, or Texas , Boeing Phantom Works The Phantom Works division is the main research and development arm of The Boeing Company. Founded by McDonnell Douglas before the merger with Boeing, its primary focus had been development of advanced military products and technologies. , the University of Massachusetts Lowell UMass Lowell was named the University of Lowell from 1975 to 1991, and was created from the merger of the Lowell Technological Institute and Lowell State College in 1975. These colleges in turn were originally named the Lowell Textile School, founded in 1895 to train technicians and and Kraka; Team Ontoprise, with members from Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University, at Pittsburgh, Pa.; est. 1967 through the merger of the Carnegie Institute of Technology (founded 1900, opened 1905) and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research (founded 1913). and Team ISX ISX InstallShield Express (Setup software) ISX Internet Service Exchange (Abovenet) ISX Insoluble Starch Xanthate ISX Information Superiority Experiments ISX Infrastructure ISX Incisive Software Extensions , with members iSoco, Stanford Medical Informatics medical informatics, n the field of information science concerned with the analysis and dissemination of medical data through the application of computers to various aspects of health care and medicine. , the University of Southern California's Information Science Institute, KSVentures and Klein Associates Klein Associates Inc. is the company founded by Dr. Gary A. Klein to apply his research on decision-making in naturalistic settings. On September 2, 2005, Klein Associates was acquired by Applied Research Associates, a New Mexico based firm that develops engineering solutions for . |
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