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Rob Speer's blog
New SQLite database
We finally have an updated SQLite database for ConceptNet. It's designed for use with ConceptNet 4.0b8 (just released). This will fix the long-standing "best_raw_id" bug.
Verbosity, and one meeeelion sentences
How did we just get nearly 200,000 new statements in Open Mind Common Sense?
We've just imported a whole lot of data from Verbosity, one of Luis von Ahn's Games with a Purpose. Verbosity collects common sense knowledge through a game: one person is given a word, and needs to get the other person to guess that word by listing common-sense facts about it.
We've just imported a whole lot of data from Verbosity, one of Luis von Ahn's Games with a Purpose. Verbosity collects common sense knowledge through a game: one person is given a word, and needs to get the other person to guess that word by listing common-sense facts about it.
Welcome back, Catherine Havasi!
Catherine Havasi co-created the Open Mind Common Sense project, as an undergraduate researcher working with Push Singh way back in 1999. For the last five years, she's been working on a doctorate in computational linguistics at Brandeis University. She's been doing a lot of cross-campus research with this group.
Last month, she finally earned her Ph.D (congratulations!). Now, she's returned to the Media Lab as a post-doc, where she'll once again be able to work on Open Mind and its applications full time. It's great to have her as an official part of the group again!
Last month, she finally earned her Ph.D (congratulations!). Now, she's returned to the Media Lab as a post-doc, where she'll once again be able to work on Open Mind and its applications full time. It's great to have her as an official part of the group again!
Divisi for Windows
The theme of this week is "make it so that our underlying code can actually be run by other people". One recent accomplishment: I finally figured out how to make a Windows installer of Divisi, our machine learning library. (The hard work to make Divisi compile on Windows at all was done by contributor Akshay Bhat. Thanks, Akshay.)
Speed issues
The Open Mind Common Sense website is currently really, really slow, and I'm sorry about that.
As we acquire more users and try to do more complicated reasoning behind the scenes, clearly what we need to do isspend the piles of money that we have just sitting around on a huge fancy server
Sorry, I meant to say: clearly what we need to do is keep finding ways to cache lots of stuff and using whatever computing power we can find. Anyway, I'm working on it.
As we acquire more users and try to do more complicated reasoning behind the scenes, clearly what we need to do is
Sorry, I meant to say: clearly what we need to do is keep finding ways to cache lots of stuff and using whatever computing power we can find. Anyway, I'm working on it.
Launchpad and Bazaar
We're on Launchpad now. We can host our version control there, track bugs, and answer questions from users.
For people who work on Open Mind within the Media Lab (and possibly even others), here's a guide to hacking on the code using Bazaar.
For people who work on Open Mind within the Media Lab (and possibly even others), here's a guide to hacking on the code using Bazaar.
Assertions, sentences, and ratings
Ken mentioned that we're in the middle of reorganizing the database. I'll fill in some more details about what we're doing.
Currently, our users give their ratings to assertions, the things that make up the links of ConceptNet. Many sentences can yield the same assertion: for example, "dogs are mammals" and "a dog is a kind of mammal" both turn into an assertion that can be expressed as IsA(dog, mammal). The ratings on these assertions are useful to representations such as AnalogySpace.
Currently, our users give their ratings to assertions, the things that make up the links of ConceptNet. Many sentences can yield the same assertion: for example, "dogs are mammals" and "a dog is a kind of mammal" both turn into an assertion that can be expressed as IsA(dog, mammal). The ratings on these assertions are useful to representations such as AnalogySpace.
A Brief Note on Status
First, thanks to everybody who has been contributing! We're running all sorts of cool analysis stuff with our data, and most everything you put it makes the analysis a bit better. And that's just the beginning...
We've gotten some feedback recently that basically suggests that our interaction with our user community has been lacking. That has definitely ratcheted up in our priorities, and we have a few things in the works. But for the moment, I thought I'd hit on a few items that people have asked about recently.
We've gotten some feedback recently that basically suggests that our interaction with our user community has been lacking. That has definitely ratcheted up in our priorities, and we have a few things in the works. But for the moment, I thought I'd hit on a few items that people have asked about recently.
Introduction
Hi, I'm Rob.
I've been working on stuff related to Open Mind since 2005, but I've had a bit of a low profile recently, because I thought I was going to go work on a different research project after I finished my master's thesis last year. After several months of dabbling in other projects and getting nowhere interesting, I found myself pulled back into OMCS. Moral of the story: if your grad school career ain't broke, don't fix it.
I've been working on stuff related to Open Mind since 2005, but I've had a bit of a low profile recently, because I thought I was going to go work on a different research project after I finished my master's thesis last year. After several months of dabbling in other projects and getting nowhere interesting, I found myself pulled back into OMCS. Moral of the story: if your grad school career ain't broke, don't fix it.
