Re: Project Earth

Lee Goddard wrote:
> 
> >The objective of Project Earth is to build a database of factual information
> >relevant to any aspect of life by collating voluntary contributions made by
> >project participants.
> 
> Does anyone remember the name of the project that tried to
> program a database with the equivelant knowledge of a three
> year-old child?  It's still running, after I think 30 years.

Did that project utilise a world-wide network of contributors like this
one aims to do or did it involve a limited team?  Of course then you
have the problem of people entering junk data in the database.  I
suppose one solution would be to have a review system like the PGP web
of trust where a given fact could be trusted in accordance with how many
people have confirmed it and how trusted a given person is considered to
be (probably has a neat parallel with how humans choose to believe
something).  

But the main problem with this approach in general IMHO is surely the
best you can hope for is a sophisticated database searching program that
can tell you $string is/= $otherstring.  By itself it wouldn't even have
much hope of passing the turing test let alone be arguably
'intelligent'.  Or am I missing something?

Regards,
Steve

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