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Press Release Detail
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2/12/2004 - Creating a Digital Aristotle: A Computerized Knowledge System for Scientists and Students
Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc. launches second phase of research initiative
SEATTLE - February 12, 2004 - Aristotle, the ancient Greek 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, today announced phase II of Project Halo, 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, which includes members from the University of Texas at Austin, Boeing Phantom Works, the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Kraka; Team Ontoprise, with members from Carnegie Mellon University and Team ISX, with members iSoco, Stanford Medical Informatics, the University of Southern California’s Information Science Institute, KSVentures and Klein Associates.
For more information about Project Halo, please contact:
Michael Nank, Media Relations Manager
Vulcan Inc.,
206.342.2000
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