Johan de Kleer talks about knowledge tracking, smart matter and other new developments in AI.

Johan de Kleer: Manager of the Systems and Practices Laboratory, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Widely published in the areas of qualitative physics, model-based reasoning, truth maintenance systems, and knowledge representation. An ACM Fellow.

... There is a renewed surge of interest in understanding and representing the content of collections of documents. As each new document comes in, we want to be able to identify the relation of the new material to what was previously collected. We call this "knowledge tracking."

Knowledge fusion: creating "the perfect document" in response to your query by fusing the meanings of parts of other documents.

... We're moving into a world where there's going to be billions of sensors each with a small bit of computation and a limited amount of energy. How can we handle such a large scale-up? This is the Internet on steroids. ... It goes way beyond the mechanisms that currently run the Internet because there will be so many more nodes ...

... it's a whole new wave.

... The whole network simply adapts.

... I try to explain the context ...

... the next generation will have a deeper appreciation and ability to use technology ...

The biggest change that happened at PARC over time has been the shift from technology to content. The other big shift is importance of the social in everything.

"This is a cool algorithm, but will people actually use it?"

... One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ...