Mindpixel was a web-based collaborative
artificial intelligence project which aimed to create a
knowledgebase
In computer science, a knowledge base (KB) is a set of sentences, each sentence given in a Knowledge representation and reasoning, knowledge representation language, with Interface (computing), interfaces to tell new sentences and to ask questio ...
of millions of human validated true/false statements, or
probabilistic propositions. It ran from 2000 to 2005.
Description
Participants in the project created one-line statements which aimed to be objectively true or false to 20 other anonymous participants. In order to submit their statement they had first to check the true/false validity of 20 such statements submitted by others. Participants whose replies were consistently out of step with the majority had their status downgraded and were eventually excluded. Likewise, participants who made contributions which others could not agree were objectively true or false had their status downgraded. A validated true/false statement is called a mindpixel.
The project enlisted the efforts of thousands of participants and claimed to be "the planet's largest artificial intelligence effort".
The project was conceived by
Chris McKinstry, a computer scientist and former
Very Large Telescope
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is an astronomical facility operated since 1998 by the European Southern Observatory, located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each equipped with ...
operator for the
European Southern Observatory
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 m ...
in
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
, as ''MISTIC'' (
Minimum Intelligent Signal Test Item Corpus) in 1996. Mindpixel was developed out of this program, and started in 2000 and had 1.4 million mindpixels in January 2004. The database and its
software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications.
The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
is known as GAC, which stands for ''"Generic Artificial Consciousness"'' and is pronounced Jak.
McKinstry believed that the Mindpixel database could be used in conjunction with a
neural net
In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks.
A neural network consists of connected ...
to produce a body of human "
common sense
Common sense () is "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument". As such, it is often considered to represent the basic level of sound practical judgement or know ...
" knowledge which would have
market value
Market value or OMV (open market valuation) is the price at which an asset would trade in a competitive auction setting. Market value is often used interchangeably with ''open market value'', ''fair value'' or '' fair market value'', although t ...
. Participants in the project were promised shares in any future value according to the number of mindpixels they had successfully created.
On 20 September 2005 Mindpixel lost its free server and is no longer operational. It was being rewritten by
Chris McKinstry as Mindpixel 2 and was intended to appear on a new server in France.
Chris McKinstry died of suicide on 23 January 2006 and the future of the project and the integrity of the data is uncertain.
Some Mindpixel data have been utilized by
Michael Spivey of
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
and Rick Dale of
The University of Memphis to study theories of high-level reasoning and continuous temporal dynamics of thought. McKinstry, along with Dale and Spivey, designed an experiment that has now been published in Psychological Science in its January, 2008 issue.
In this paper, McKinstry (as posthumous first author), Dale, and Spivey use a very small and carefully selected set of Mindpixel statements to show that even high-level thought processes like
decision making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...
can be revealed in the nonlinear dynamics of bodily action.
Other similar AI-driven knowledge acquisition projects are
Never-Ending Language Learning and
Open Mind Common Sense (run by
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
), the latter being also hampered when its director died of suicide.
[
]
See also
*
Never-Ending Language Learning
*
Cyc
Cyc (pronounced ) is a long-term artificial intelligence (AI) project that aims to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base that spans the basic concepts and rules about how the world works. Hoping to capture common sense knowledge ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Mindpixel Home page(Currently points to a "Mindpixel IQ test" using the Mindpixel Db of validated statements)
Artificial intelligence
Knowledge bases