Portada by Rodrigo Arias

Intelligent Systems in Society. Interview with Douglas Lenat

Douglas Lenat is one of the most renowned computer scientists in the world. He has taught Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie-Mellon and Stanford. His many publications include four books and hundreds of articles in magazines such as Scientific American and Communications of the ACM. In December 1984, Science Digest named him as one of the most brilliant scientists under 40 years of age, in the United States. Presently, Douglas Lenat is the president of Cycorp, whose principal objective is to continue the development of CYC: the largest knowledge base and reasoning mechanism in the world.

CYC's technology can best be used in practical applications such as: intelligent data search in the WEB, interphases in natural language (i.e. Spanish) for consulting data bases, on-line distribution of services, simulation of intelligent characters in games, and client oriented services.

After 12 years of working in this project, Douglas Lenat believes that computers have indeed displaced a number of jobs, but have also created even more new jobs. Unfortunately, he says, not always for the same persons.

If society wishes to expand itself in some way, then it must pay a price for it, which may even be profitable. There has always existed conflict when one thinks that machines make us feel lessened in our functions as human beings.

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July, 1997