] By addressing fundamental problems with machine learning
] and exploring the foundations of intelligence, Koller is
] pushing the limits of present-day scientific
] understanding of how to build computer programs that
] learn efficiently and reason intelligently.
Koller's work weaves together logic and probability in a context to support learning. This could be a significant advance.

Wired News: Awarding the Brains Behind AI

] The world's knowledge reservoir has long since grown way
] too deep for anyone to do that, but Microsoft co-founder
] Paul Allen is throwing money into pursuing this
] extraordinarily far-out notion: Can a computer be loaded
] with the world's textbook-science knowledge, reason
] through it and then answer questions in plain English
] like a phenomenal teacher, a "Digital Aristotle"?

See http://www.projecthalo.com/ for more detail. The Phase I results in the Chemistry domain are very compelling. Check out the Project Halo Results browser to see for the examination results for three knowledge-based representation and reasoning (KRR) systems.

The browser lays out how 100 questions were encoded for each of the systems, the answer produced, and a translation of the answer back into natural language. The coolest thing are PDF images of the annotations made by the three subject matter experts (SME's) on the answers provided.

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Vulcan project aims to build 'Digital Aristotle'

] For its Top Ten Program, Winter Corp. gathers voluntary
] submissions from companies worldwide that are running
] large databases. The program requires that the databases
] must be in production and contain at least 1 terabyte of
] data (or 500 megabytes of data if running on Windows).
] The results, divided into 24 categories, are based on the
] amount of online data running on the database.
]
] The largest decision-support database in this year's
] survey is from France Telecom and handles 29.2 terabytes
] of data, triple the size of the top database in that
] category in Winter's last survey in 2001.

This is an interesting analog to the list of top supercomputers. Although supercomputers are typically used for number crunching and data-mining rather than decision support, it is interesting to speculate what the marriage between a very large database and a supercomputer oriented toward decision support would look like and what it would cost.

Survey: Databases Push Toward New Heights

] KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT revolves around the concept that one
] of the most valuable corporate assets is the experience
] and expertise floating around inside employees' heads. In
] order to manage this intellectual capital, executives
] must devise a way to capture and share that knowledge
] with coworkers. If done right, KM is supposed to create a
] more collaborative environment, cut down on duplication
] of effort and encourage knowledge sharing

Stumbled over this looking for information about CereByte, a KM software company in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Ideas - KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT - Magazine - Darwin Magazine