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copied!<p>One of the most impressive Lisp applications is surely <a href="http://www.cyc.com/" rel="noreferrer">Cyc</a>. Cyc is a project started by Doug Lenat that tries to put common-sense knowledge into a knowledge-based system. Not just a bit, but really really lots of knowledge. Humans have learned a lot of widely different things and it was seen a limitation to artificial intelligence software to not know anything of that. What is the typical color of honey? Do we sit on a chair or under a chair? A cup of fresh coffee is hot. When it rains outside, it does not rain inside. Sea water contains salt, but water in a pond does not. Most birds can fly. Some birds can't fly. It is surprising how many of these facts, rules and concepts people know.</p> <p>Cyc is under continuous development since 1984 and the knowledge base contains (numbers are from 2004) more than 2.5 million facts and rules. It also contains more than 150 thousand concepts (similar to classes in OOP). Cyc is developed in SubL (a dialect of Common Lisp). </p> <p>Knowledge is entered in CycL (a declarative logic based language). Specially trained people are entering knowledge. Cyc checks that this new knowledge is not in conflict with existing knowledge. It can also derive new conclusions and one can query it. For its answers it can also generate explanations. Cyc has also many domain-specific heuristics implemented.</p> <p>In the early days the project started developing on Lisp Machines, but today the software is portable and is also available to interested students and researches (OpenCyc and ResearchCyc).</p>

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