From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Fri Nov 05 2004 - 10:17:15 MST
Hi Stephen,
Indeed, Cycorp has done an excellent job of bringing in government funding
;-)
Unfortunately though, as I've expressed before, I'm pretty sure the Cyc AI
design is incapable of achieving a high level of general intelligence...
How are things with Cognitive Cyc?
ben
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of Stephen
> Reed
> Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 9:55 AM
> To: sl4@sl4.org
> Subject: Re: Tomorrow is a new day
>
>
> Cycorp revenues, mostly from U.S. government sponsors, are an order of
> magnitude higher than the numbers mentioned here. Over the last three
> years, our staff has numbered between 50 and 70. We have a mix of
> programmers (some advanced degrees), philosophers and linguists. About
> half the staff have completed their PhDs. Because working to
> create an AI
> is highly satisfying, our founder/owner Doug Lenat has been able
> to retain
> an outstanding staff at reasonable salaries in Austin, Texas. It helps
> that the working environment is highly academic compared to say IBM or
> Dell. We do not scrimp on hardware, and are moving to AMD64 white box
> servers. We are a linux shop and that saves on software license fees.
>
> We are able to win contracts that are mostly aligned with core tasks that
> we want to do, and unlike some companies that compete with us for U.S.
> government contracts, we have a single ongoing software system (Cyc) that
> is enhanced by the contract tasks.
>
> -Steve
>
> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Michael Roy Ames wrote:
>
> > I would concur with Michael Wilson on IT staffing costs. Today
> I just got
> > home from an employee brainstorming day with Enkon, the company
> I work for
> > (in Canada). The per employee remuneration cost is between $50
> and $70K
> > U.S. for high-quality and motivated staff. Bare subsistence
> pay is 1/3rd of
> > those figures, depending on where you live.
> >
> > Michael Roy Ames
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Michael Wilson" <mwdestinystar@yahoo.co.uk>
> > To: <sl4@sl4.org>
> > Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 15:30
> > Subject: Re: Tomorrow is a new day
> >
> >
> > "J. Andrew Rogers" wrote:
> > > Marc Geddes wrote:
> > >> So at least $US 300 000 per year.
> > >
> > > Double the amount of money for the same setup, and
> > > you might be in the ballpark.
> >
> > My last company had twelve inexperienced but talented staff,
> > plus some experienced part time directors and consultants,
> > plus state of the art workstations and a modest server farm.
> > We spent about $420,000 in total during the year that we were
> > fully operational. Since people are prepared to be underpaid
> > just to work in the games industry, the salaries were probably
> > comparable to people doing it for the ethics rather than the
> > salary. If you want to hire top-notch staff off the shelf,
> > inhabit prestige offices and and a serious compute cluster,
> > triple that. If you want to do it in a tech hot spot and use
> > industry best practices and high-powered consultants, double
> > it again. Add the cost of a supercomputer if you think AGI
> > needs one. Fortunately the SIAI project doesn't need marketing,
> > distribution, customer support (shame, the seed AI helpdesk
> > would be an amusing experience) or any of those other near/post
> > deployment inconveniences.
> >
> > * Michael Wilson
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo!
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>
> --
> ===========================================================
> Stephen L. Reed phone: 512.342.4036
> Cycorp, Suite 100 fax: 512.342.4040
> 3721 Executive Center Drive email: reed@cyc.com
> Austin, TX 78731 web: http://www.cyc.com
> download OpenCyc at http://www.opencyc.org
> ===========================================================
>
>
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