Cognitive Code at TC40
- September 17th, 2007
- 4 Comments
John Biggs just sent me a frantic Skype to look into Cognitive Code, a company he just discovered at TC40. After looking over its offerings, I’m forced to say that I’m sharing his excitement, albeit skeptically.
Cognitive Code is the developer of SILVIA (Symbolically Isolated, Linguistically Variable, Intelligence Algorithms), a conversationally adept AI. Its technology can be embedded into a multitude of products and can interpret an expansive amount of data. SILVIA supports variable input that allows it to understand meaning on a context-sensitive conceptual level. It has a dynamic output range that allows it to learn and utilize dialects and idioms. The software can also function in multiple languages and on multiple platforms. In 2008, Cognitive Code will launch Pocket SILVIA, a mobile platforms port of the complete runtime core of Pocket SILVIA.
The impressive element of this technology lies in its embeddability. Imagine, for instance, that SILVIA was embedded in a robot with sight and movement capabilities. Ordering it to “go get a red block” would send it on a search for a red block and it would then return to you with a block. Theoretically, anyway.
I’m always skeptical of technologies like this, despite the fact that I know they’re coming. Have we really progressed this far? Check out the Cognitive Code descriptions of SILVIA and let me know what you all think.
Update: The Patent Monkey kids just dug up the patent information filed by Cognitive Code CTO Leslie Spring while he worked for Sony. The technology from the Sony patent is inline with the SILVIA technology presented by Cognitive Code.
John Chen COO (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Blake
I assure you that the software is everything that we describe and then some.
At some point we would welcome a discussion of the technology and all of its implications.
Thanks for the mention.
Best
John Chen COO
Cognitive Code Corporation
Forrest Bennett (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Another patent on this technology is here:
http://www.patentmonkey.com/PM/patentid/20030225829.aspx
There are supposed to be 15 patents, but I can’t find the other 12. I forget where to look for those that have been filed but not yet granted.
Forrest Bennett (Who am I?)
1 year ago
The video had only this to say about how it works (at times 1:45 to 2:05):
1. Direct training
2. strong AI techniques for conceptual transformation
3. actual brain uses genetic algorithms
4. mumble mumble cellular automata (anyone make this out?)
I can’t think of what they could possibly be using the CA for, can you?
Does anyone know how deep this is? All I got from the website is that they have fully separated the “thinking” from the language part. So language inputs are converted into data structures, manipulated, and then translated back out to English. Ie, it should be possible to bolt on other languages.
I haven’t seen any serious discussion of this anywhere on the web.
My sense is that this system has very little “smarts”, in the sense of solving problems such as those handled by state of the art ML techniques.
Forrest Bennett (Who am I?)
1 year ago
The video had only this to say about how it works (at times 1:45 to 2:05):
1. Direct training
2. strong AI techniques for conceptual transformation
3. actual brain uses genetic algorithms
4. mumble? mumble? cellular automata
I can’t think of what they could possibly be using the CA for.
There are 15 patents, here’s the only 2 I could find:
http://www.patentmonkey.com/PM/searchresults/Default.aspx
http://www.patentmonkey.com/PM/patentid/20030225829.aspx
I haven’t found any serious discussion of this anywhere on the web.
My sense is that this system has very little “smarts”, in the sense of actually being able to solve problems at the level of state of the art machine learning.
Does anyone know how deep this is?