BookReviews

Building Large Knowledge-Based Systems (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1990, 372 pages, $39.75, ISBN O-201-51752-3) by Douglas B. Lenat and R. V. Guha is an interim report on the Microelectronic and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) Cyc project. Cyc is an ambitious lo-year effort whose goal is to overcome the brittleness of contemporary expert systems by capturing the millions of facts and heuristics that MCC researchers consider to be the consensus reality that all intelligent beings share and that leads to common sense. As the authors state in their preface, "There are deep, important issues that must be addressed if we are ever to have a large intelligent knowledge-based program: What ontological categories would make up an adequate set for carving up the universe? What are the important things most human beings today know about solid objects? This book does an admirable job of presenting their research.