Editing Open Mind Common Sense

{{Short description|Artificial intelligence project}}

'''Open Mind Common Sense''' ('''OMCS''') is an [[artificial intelligence]] project based at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) [[MIT Media Lab|Media Lab]] whose goal is to build and utilize a large [[commonsense knowledge (artificial intelligence)|commonsense knowledge base]] from the contributions of many thousands of people across the Web. It has been active from 1999 to 2016.

Since its founding, it has accumulated more than a million English facts from over 15,000 contributors in addition to knowledge bases in other languages. Much of OMCS's software is built on three interconnected representations: the natural language corpus that people interact with directly, a semantic network built from this corpus called '''ConceptNet''', and a matrix-based representation of ConceptNet called '''AnalogySpace''' that can infer new knowledge using [[dimensionality reduction]].<ref name="aaai" /> The knowledge collected by Open Mind Common Sense has enabled research projects at MIT and elsewhere.

== History ==

The project was the brainchild of [[Marvin Minsky]], Push Singh, [[Catherine Havasi]], and others. Development work began in September 1999, and the project opened to the Internet a year later. Havasi described it in her dissertation as "an attempt to ... harness some of the distributed human computing power of the Internet, an idea which was then only in its early stages."<ref name="havasi-thesis"/> The original OMCS was influenced by the website [[Everything2]] and its predecessor, and presents a minimalist interface that is inspired by [[Google]].

Push Singh would have become a professor at the [[MIT Media Lab]] and lead the Common Sense Computing group in 2007, but committed suicide on February 28, 2006.<ref name="singh-obituary" />

The project is currently run by the Digital Intuition Group at the MIT Media Lab under Catherine Havasi.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

== Database and website ==

There are many different types of knowledge in OMCS. Some statements convey relationships between objects or events, expressed as simple phrases of natural language: some examples include "A coat is used for keeping warm", "The sun is very hot", and "The last thing you do when you cook dinner is wash your dishes". The database also contains information on the emotional content of situations, in such statements as "Spending time with friends causes happiness" and "Getting into a car wreck makes one angry".  OMCS contains information on people's desires and goals, both large and small, such as "People want to be
respected" and "People want good coffee".<ref name="aaai" />

Originally, these statements could be entered into the Web site as unconstrained sentences of text, which had to be parsed later. The current version of [http://openmind.media.mit.edu the Web site] collects knowledge only using more structured fill-in-the-blank templates. OMCS also makes use of data collected by the [[Game with a purpose|Game With a Purpose]] "[https://web.archive.org/web/20090929094517/http://www.gwap.com/gwap/gamesPreview/verbosity/ Verbosity]".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://openmind.media.mit.edu/profiles/verbosity/ |title=Profile for verbosity |publisher=Open Mind Commons Sense |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100625014205/http://openmind.media.mit.edu/profiles/verbosity/ |archive-date=2010-06-25 }}</ref>

In its native form, the OMCS database is simply a collection of these short sentences that convey some common knowledge. In order to use this knowledge computationally, it has to be transformed into a more structured representation.

== ConceptNet ==

ConceptNet is a [[semantic network]] based on the information in the OMCS database. ConceptNet is expressed as a directed graph whose nodes are concepts, and whose edges are assertions of common sense about these concepts. Concepts represent sets of closely related natural language phrases, which could be noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, or clauses.<ref name="ranlp-conceptnet" />

ConceptNet is created from the natural-language assertions in OMCS by matching them against patterns using a shallow parser.  Assertions are expressed as relations between two concepts, selected from a limited set of possible
relations.  The various relations represent common sentence patterns found in the OMCS corpus, and in particular, every "fill-in-the-blanks" template used on the knowledge-collection Web site is associated with a particular relation.<ref name="ranlp-conceptnet" />

The data structures that make up ConceptNet were significantly reorganized in 2007, and published as ConceptNet 3.<ref name="ranlp-conceptnet" /> The Software Agents group currently distributes a database and API for the new version 4.0.<ref
name="launchpad-conceptnet" />

In 2010, OMCS co-founder and director Catherine Havasi, with Robyn Speer, Dennis Clark and Jason Alonso, created [[Luminoso]], a text analytics software company that builds on ConceptNet.<ref name="NYT">{{cite news|last1=Lohr|first1=Steve|title=The U.S.-Germany Match Through a Social Media Lens|url=http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/the-u-s-germany-match-through-a-social-media-lens/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0|access-date=3 March 2015|work=New York Times|date=27 June 2014}}</ref><ref name="WSJ">{{cite news|last1=Rusli|first1=Evelyn|title=Firms Use Artificial Intelligence to Tap Shoppers' Views|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303887804579501800057021822|access-date=3 March 2015|publisher=The Wall Street Journal|date=14 April 2014}}</ref><ref name="Wired">{{cite news|last1=Alba|first1=Davey|author-link1=Davey Alba|title=The Startup That Helps You Analyze Twitter Chatter in Real Time|url=https://www.wired.com/2015/02/luminoso/|access-date=3 March 2015|publisher=Wired|date=12 February 2015}}</ref><ref name="PCWorld">{{cite news|last1=Noyes|first1=Katherine|title=Luminoso to enterprises: Here's what all that chatter really means|url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/2883412/luminoso-to-enterprises-heres-what-all-that-chatter-really-means.html|access-date=3 March 2015|publisher=PC World|date=11 February 2015}}</ref> It uses ConceptNet as its primary lexical resource in order to help businesses make sense of and derive insight from vast amounts of qualitative data, including surveys, product reviews and social media.<ref name="NYT" /><ref name="TechCrunch">{{cite news|last1=Miller|first1=Ron|title=Luminoso Lands $6.5M In Series A To Keep Building Cloud Text Analytics Service|url=https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/02/luminoso-lands-6-5m-in-venture-capital-to-keep-building-cloud-text-analytics-service/|access-date=3 March 2015|publisher=TechCrunch|date=2 July 2014}}</ref><ref name="GigaOm">{{cite news|last1=Darrow|first1=Barb|title=Luminoso brings its text analysis smarts to streaming data|url=https://gigaom.com/2015/02/11/luminoso-brings-its-text-analysis-smarts-to-streaming-data/|access-date=3 March 2015|publisher=GigaOm|date=11 February 2015}}</ref>

== Machine learning tools ==

The information in ConceptNet can be used as a basis for [[machine learning]] algorithms. One representation, called AnalogySpace, uses [[singular value decomposition]] to generalize and represent patterns in the knowledge in
ConceptNet, in a way that can be used in AI applications. Its creators distribute a Python machine learning toolkit called Divisi<ref name="launchpad-divisi" /> for performing machine learning based on [[Text corpus|text corpora]], structured knowledge bases such as ConceptNet, and combinations of the two.

== Comparison to other projects ==

Other similar projects include [[Never-Ending Language Learning]], [[Mindpixel]] (discontinued), [[Cyc]], Learner, SenticNet, [[Freebase (database)|Freebase]], [[YAGO (database)|YAGO]], [[DBpedia]], and Open Mind 1001 Questions, which have explored alternative approaches to collecting knowledge and providing incentive for participation.

The Open Mind Common Sense project differs from Cyc because it has focused on representing the common sense knowledge it collected as English sentences, rather than using a formal logical structure. ConceptNet is described by one of its creators, Hugo Liu, as being structured more like [[WordNet]] than Cyc, due to its "emphasis on informal conceptual-connectedness over formal linguistic-rigor".<ref name="hugo-conceptnet"/>

== See also ==
*[[Attempto Controlled English]] (ACE), a [[controlled natural language]]
*[[Never-Ending Language Learning]]
*[[Mindpixel]]
*[[Semantic Web]]
*[[DBpedia]]
*[[Freebase (database)]]
*[[YAGO (database)]]

== References ==
{{Reflist|refs=<ref name="havasi-thesis">Catherine Havasi. Discovering Semantic Relations Using Singular Value Decomposition Based Techniques. Ph.D Thesis, Brandeis University June 2009.</ref>
<ref name="aaai">Robyn Speer, Catherine Havasi, and Henry Lieberman. [http://analogyspace.media.mit.edu/media/speerhavasi.pdf AnalogySpace: Reducing the Dimensionality of Common Sense Knowledge] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100709150020/http://analogyspace.media.mit.edu/media/speerhavasi.pdf |date=2010-07-09 }}. AAAI 2008.</ref>
<ref name="singh-obituary">
{{cite web |author=MIT News Office |title=Memorial service slated tomorrow for Pushpinder Singh |work=MIT Tech Talk |date=2006-03-08 |access-date=2009-10-07 |url=http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/obit-singh.html}}</ref>
<ref name="ranlp-conceptnet">Catherine Havasi, Robyn Speer and Jason Alonso. [https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20080221224624/http://conceptnet.media.mit.edu/cnet3.pdf ConceptNet 3: a Flexible, Multilingual Semantic Network for Common Sense Knowledge]. Proceedings of Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, 2007.  try [http://web.media.mit.edu/~jalonso/cnet3.pdf ConceptNet 3:...] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150529053053/http://web.media.mit.edu/~jalonso/cnet3.pdf |date=2015-05-29 }}</ref>
<ref name="launchpad-conceptnet">
{{cite web |author=Commonsense Computing Initiative |title=ConceptNet API in Launchpad |date=2009-02-24 |access-date=2009-10-07 |url=http://launchpad.net/conceptnet}}</ref>
<ref name="launchpad-divisi">
{{cite web |author=Commonsense Computing Initiative |title=Divisi in Launchpad |date=2009-02-24 |access-date=2009-10-07 |url=http://launchpad.net/divisi}}</ref>
<ref name="hugo-conceptnet">{{cite web|url=http://web.media.mit.edu/~hugo/conceptnet/index.html|title=The ConceptNet Project V2.1|access-date=2008-12-17}}</ref>
}}

== External links ==
* [https://github.com/commonsense/omcs Open Mind Common Sense meta-repository Github]
* [http://conceptnet.io/ ConceptNet]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090501073047/http://analogyspace.media.mit.edu/ AnalogySpace]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090422161559/http://divisi.media.mit.edu/ The Divisi inference toolkit]
* [http://csc.media.mit.edu/ Commonsense Computing Initiative's Webpage] (Site doesn't exist)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20030805105416/http://openmind.org/ The Open Mind Initiative] (Site doesn't exist)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20031011174341/http://www.eturner.net/omcsnetcpp/ OMCSNetCPP - Open source C++ inference engine using the OMCSNet data]
* [https://archive.today/20130102002640/http://www.sensocomum.ufscar.br/ Open Mind Common Sense in Brazil] (Site broken)
* [https://www.emotionalmachines.org/heartgallery.html  Open Heart Common Sense - Emotional common sense with art] (Legacy page)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131220021800/http://lia.dc.ufscar.br/ Advanced Interaction Laboratory]
{{Semantic Web}}

[[Category:Open-source artificial intelligence]]
[[Category:Knowledge bases]]
[[Category:Creative Commons-licensed databases]]