OpenCog is a project that aims to build an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

artificial intelligence framework. OpenCog Prime is an architecture for robot and virtual

embodied cognition Embodied cognition represents a diverse group of theories which investigate how cognition is shaped by the bodily state and capacities of the organism. These embodied factors include the motor system, the perceptual system, bodily interactions wi ...

that defines a set of interacting components designed to give rise to human-equivalent

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

(AGI) as an

emergent phenomenon In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central role ...

of the whole system. OpenCog Prime's design is primarily the work of Ben Goertzel while the OpenCog framework is intended as a generic framework for broad-based AGI research. Research utilizing OpenCog has been published in journals and presented at conferences and workshops including the annual Conference on Artificial General Intelligence. OpenCog is released under the terms of the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended fo ...

. OpenCog is in use by more than 50 companies, including

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

and

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

Origin

OpenCog was originally based on the release in 2008 of the source code of the proprietary "Novamente Cognition Engine" (NCE) of Novamente LLC. The original NCE code is discussed in the PLN book (ref below). Ongoing development of OpenCog is supported by Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (AGIRI), the

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

project,

Hanson Robotics Hanson Robotics Limited is a Hong Kong–based engineering and robotics company founded by David Hanson, known for its development of human-like robots with artificial intelligence (AI) for consumer, entertainment, service, healthcare, and rese ...

, SingularityNET and others.

Components

OpenCog consists of: * A

graph database A graph database (GDB) is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the graph (or edge or relationship). The graph relates the dat ...

, dubbed th
AtomSpace
that holds "atoms" (that is,

terms Term may refer to: Language *Terminology, context-specific nouns or compound words **Technical term (or ''term of art''), used by specialists in a field ***Scientific terminology, used by scientists *Term (argumentation), part of an argument in d ...

atomic formula In mathematical logic, an atomic formula (also known as an atom or a prime formula) is a formula with no deeper propositional structure, that is, a formula that contains no logical connectives or equivalently a formula that has no strict subformu ...

sentences The ''Sentences'' (. ) is a compendium of Christian theology written by Peter Lombard around 1150. It was the most important religious textbook of the Middle Ages. Background The sentence genre emerged from works like Prosper of Aquitaine's ...

and relationships) together with their "values" ( valuations or interpretations, which can be thought of as per-atom key-value databases). An example of a value would be a

truth value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values ('' true'' or '' false''). Truth values are used in ...

. Atoms are globally unique, immutable and are indexed (searchable); values are fleeting and changeable. * A collection of pre-defined atoms, terme
Atomese
used for generic

knowledge representation Knowledge representation (KR) aims to model information in a structured manner to formally represent it as knowledge in knowledge-based systems whereas knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, or KR²) also aims to understand, reason, and ...

, such as

conceptual graph A conceptual graph (CG) is a formalism for knowledge representation. In the first published paper on CGs, John F. Sowa used them to represent the conceptual schemas used in database systems. The first book on CGs applied them to a wide range of ...

s and

semantic network A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...

s, as well as to represent and store the rules (in the sense of

term rewriting In mathematics, computer science, and logic, rewriting covers a wide range of methods of replacing subterms of a formula with other terms. Such methods may be achieved by rewriting systems (also known as rewrite systems, rewrite engines, or reduc ...

) needed to manipulate such graphs. * A collection of pre-defined atoms that encode a type subsystem, including

type constructor In the area of mathematical logic and computer science known as type theory, a type constructor is a feature of a typed formal language that builds new types from old ones. Basic types are considered to be built using nullary type constructors. So ...

s and

function type In computer science and mathematical logic, a function type (or arrow type or exponential) is the type of a variable or parameter to which a function has or can be assigned, or an argument or result type of a higher-order function taking or return ...

s. These are used to specify the types of variables, terms and expressions, and are used to specify the structure of generic graphs containing variables. * A collection of pre-defined atoms that encode both functional and imperative programming styles. These include the lambda abstraction for binding

free variable In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a variable may be said to be either free or bound. Some older books use the terms real variable and apparent variable for f ...

s into

bound variable In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a variable may be said to be either free or bound. Some older books use the terms real variable and apparent variable for f ...

s, as well as for performing

beta reduction In mathematical logic, the lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable Name binding, binding and Substitution (algebra), substitution ...

. * A collection of pre-defined atoms that encode a

satisfiability modulo theories In computer science and mathematical logic, satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) is the problem of determining whether a mathematical formula is satisfiable. It generalizes the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) to more complex formulas involv ...

solver, built in as a part of a generic graph query engine, for performing graph and hypergraph pattern matching ( isomorphic subgraph discovery). This generalizes the idea of a structured query language (

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

) to the domain of generic graphical queries; it is an extended form of a graph

query language A query language, also known as data query language or database query language (DQL), is a computer language used to make queries in databases and information systems. In database systems, query languages rely on strict theory to retrieve informa ...

. * A generic

rule engine A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. The rules might come from legal regulation ("An employee can be fired for any reason or no reason but not for an illegal r ...

, including a forward chainer and a backward chainer, that is able to chain together rules. The rules are exactly the graph queries of the graph query subsystem, and so the rule engine vaguely resembles a

query plan A query plan (or query execution plan) is a sequence of steps used to access data in a SQL relational database management system. This is a specific case of the relational model concept of access plans. Since SQL is declarative, there are typical ...

ner. It is designed so as to allow different kinds of

inference engine In the field of artificial intelligence, an inference engine is a software component of an intelligent system that applies logical rules to the knowledge base to deduce new information. The first inference engines were components of expert systems ...

s and reasoning systems to be implemented, such as

Bayesian inference Bayesian inference ( or ) is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to calculate a probability of a hypothesis, given prior evidence, and update it as more information becomes available. Fundamentally, Bayesian infer ...

fuzzy logic Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely ...

, or practical tasks, such as

constraint solver Constraint may refer to: * Constraint (computer-aided design), a demarcation of geometrical characteristics between two or more entities or solid modeling bodies * Constraint (mathematics), a condition of an optimization problem that the solution m ...

s or motion planners. * An attention allocation subsystem based on economic theory, termed ECAN. This subsystem is used to control the combinatorial explosion of search possibilities that are met during inference and chaining. * An implementation of a probabilistic

reasoning engine A semantic reasoner, reasoning engine, rules engine, or simply a reasoner, is a piece of software able to infer logical consequences from a set of asserted facts or axioms. The notion of a semantic reasoner generalizes that of an inference engine ...

based on probabilistic logic networks (PLN). The current implementation uses the rule engine to chain together specific rules of

logical inference Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word ''infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinction ...

(such as

modus ponens In propositional logic, (; MP), also known as (), implication elimination, or affirming the antecedent, is a deductive argument form and rule of inference. It can be summarized as "''P'' implies ''Q.'' ''P'' is true. Therefore, ''Q'' must ...

), together with some very specific mathematical formulas assigning a probability and a confidence to each deduction. This subsystem can be thought of as a certain kind of

proof assistant In computer science and mathematical logic, a proof assistant or interactive theorem prover is a software tool to assist with the development of formal proofs by human–machine collaboration. This involves some sort of interactive proof edi ...

that works with a modified form of Bayesian inference. * A probabilistic genetic program evolver called Meta-Optimizing Semantic Evolutionary Search, or MOSES. This is used to discover collections of short Atomese programs that accomplish tasks; these can be thought of as performing a kind of

decision tree learning Decision tree learning is a supervised learning approach used in statistics, data mining and machine learning. In this formalism, a classification or regression decision tree is used as a predictive model to draw conclusions about a set of obser ...

, resulting in a kind of decision forest, or rather, a generalization thereof. * A natural language input system consisting of

Link Grammar Link grammar (LG) is a theory of syntax by Davy Temperley and Daniel Sleator which builds relations between pairs of words, rather than constructing constituents in a phrase structure hierarchy. Link grammar is similar to dependency grammar, but ...

, and partly inspired by both Meaning-Text Theory as well as Dick Hudson's

Word Grammar Word Grammar is a theory of linguistics, developed by Richard Hudson since the 1980s. It started as a model of syntax, whose most distinctive characteristic is its use of dependency grammar, an approach to syntax in which the sentence's structure i ...

, which encodes semantic and syntactic relations in Atomese. * A natural language generation system. * An implementation of

Psi-Theory Psi-theory, developed by Dietrich Dörner at the University of Bamberg, is a systemic psychological theory covering human action regulation, intention selection and emotion.Dörner, D., Bartl, C., Detje, F., Gerdes, J., Halcour, D., Schaub, H., S ...

for handling

emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...

al states, drives and urges, dubbed OpenPsi. * Interfaces to

robots, including emotion modelling via OpenPsi. This includes the Loving AI project, used to demonstrate meditation techniques.

Organization and funding

In 2008, the

Machine Intelligence Research Institute The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artifi ...

(MIRI), formerly called Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), sponsored several researchers and engineers. Many contributions from the open source community have been made since OpenCog's involvement in the

in 2008 and 2009. Currently MIRI no longer supports OpenCog. OpenCog has received funding and support from several sources, including the Hong Kong government,

Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU or HKPU) is a public research university in Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. The university is one of the eight government-funded degree-granting tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Founded in 1937 a ...

, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation and

. In 2013, OpenCog began providing AI solutions to Hanson Robotics, and in 2017, OpenCog became a founding member of SingularityNET..

Applications

Similar to other

cognitive architecture A cognitive architecture is both a theory about the structure of the human mind and to a computational instantiation of such a theory used in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and computational cognitive science. These formalized models ...

s, the main purpose is to create virtual humans, which are three dimensional

avatar Avatar (, ; ) is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means . It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearance" is sometimes u ...

characters. The goal is to mimic behaviors like emotions, gestures and learning. For example, the emotion module in the software was only programmed because humans have emotions. Artificial General Intelligence can be realized if it simulates intelligence of humans. The self-description of the OpenCog project provides additional possible applications which are going into the direction of natural language processing and the simulation of a dog.

Sources

*
Gbooks
* Goertzel, B., Iklé, M., Goertzel, I.F., Heljakka, A.
Probabilistic Logic Networks, A Comprehensive Framework for Uncertain Inference
', Springer, 2009, VIII, 336 p., Hardcover

References

External links

*
OpenCog Wiki
* * *
CogPrime: An Integrative Architecture for Embodied Artificial General Intelligence
* Given at Monash University Australia, Sept 2011. Adam Ford *. Ben speaks on OpenCog in Tai Po, Hong Kong, Dec 2011. Adam Ford * Adam Ford {{Existential risk from artificial intelligence Software using the GNU Affero General Public License Open-source artificial intelligence Emergence