True Knowledge
Encyclopedia
True Knowledge Ltd. company in Cambridge, England, founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe, which specialises in knowledge base
and semantic search engine software. Its first product was an answer engine
that aimed to directly answer questions posed in plain English text, which is accomplished using a database
of discrete facts. The True Knowledge Answer engine was launched for private beta testing and development on November 7, 2007.
?”, True Knowledge would reason from the facts “George W. Bush is a president”, “George W. Bush is a human being”, “A president is a subclass of human being”, “Date of creation is a more general form for birth date”, and “the 6th of July is the date of creation for George W. Bush”, to produce the simple answer, “the 6th of July”. True Knowledge differs from competitors like Freebase
and DBpedia
in that they offer natural language access. Unlike the others however, users who post information to True Knowledge granted the company a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual licence to use such information to operate this website and for any other purposes.".
's, allowing users to modify or “agree”/“disagree” with information presented by True Knowledge. The system itself also assesses submitted information due the fact that the information is submitted as discrete facts that computers can understand. The system is able to reject any facts that are semantically incompatible with other approved knowledge. On November 21, 2008, True Knowledge announced on its official blog that over 100,000 facts had been added by beta users and as of August 18, 2010 the True Knowledge database overall contained 283,511,156 facts about 9,237,091 things.
In November 2010, True Knowledge used some 300 million facts to calculate that Sunday April 11, 1954 was the most boring day since 1900.
Knowledge base
A knowledge base is a special kind of database for knowledge management. A Knowledge Base provides a means for information to be collected, organised, shared, searched and utilised.-Types:...
and semantic search engine software. Its first product was an answer engine
Question answering
In information retrieval and natural language processing , question answering is the task of automatically answering a question posed in natural language...
that aimed to directly answer questions posed in plain English text, which is accomplished using a database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
of discrete facts. The True Knowledge Answer engine was launched for private beta testing and development on November 7, 2007.
Premise
The True Knowledge Answer Engine attempts to comprehend posed questions by disambiguating from all possible meanings of the words in the question to find the most likely meaning of the question being asked. It does this by drawing upon its database of knowledge of discrete facts. As these facts are stored in a form that the computer can understand, the answer engine attempts to produce an answer to what it comprehends to be the question by logically deducing from them. For example, if one were to type in “What is the birth date of George W. BushGeorge W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
?”, True Knowledge would reason from the facts “George W. Bush is a president”, “George W. Bush is a human being”, “A president is a subclass of human being”, “Date of creation is a more general form for birth date”, and “the 6th of July is the date of creation for George W. Bush”, to produce the simple answer, “the 6th of July”. True Knowledge differs from competitors like Freebase
Freebase (database)
Freebase is a large collaborative knowledge base consisting of metadata composed mainly by its community members. It is an online collection of structured data harvested from many sources, including individual 'wiki' contributions. Freebase aims to create a global resource which allows people to...
and DBpedia
DBpedia
DBpedia is a project aiming to extract structured content from the information created as part of the Wikipedia project. This structured information is then made available on the World Wide Web. DBpedia allows users to query relationships and properties associated with Wikipedia resources,...
in that they offer natural language access. Unlike the others however, users who post information to True Knowledge granted the company a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual licence to use such information to operate this website and for any other purposes.".
Knowledge accumulation and verification
True Knowledge gathers information for its database in two ways: importing it from "credible" external databases (which for them includes Wikipedia) and from user submission following a consistent format and detailed process for input. True Knowledge strives to monitor this user submitted knowledge in multiple ways. One method involves a system of checks and balances in some ways similar to WikipediaWikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
's, allowing users to modify or “agree”/“disagree” with information presented by True Knowledge. The system itself also assesses submitted information due the fact that the information is submitted as discrete facts that computers can understand. The system is able to reject any facts that are semantically incompatible with other approved knowledge. On November 21, 2008, True Knowledge announced on its official blog that over 100,000 facts had been added by beta users and as of August 18, 2010 the True Knowledge database overall contained 283,511,156 facts about 9,237,091 things.
In November 2010, True Knowledge used some 300 million facts to calculate that Sunday April 11, 1954 was the most boring day since 1900.
Financing
On May 7, 2007, True Knowledge Ltd. announced it would be “actively seeking investments following several years of internally-funded development”. Then, on September 17, 2007, Octopus Ventures, a British venture capitalist firm, announced its investment of more than $1.2 million into True Knowledge, the first significant investment into the company, allowing it to further develop its website and achieve critical milestones towards bringing the True Knowledge Answer Engine to market. On July 30, 2008, True Knowledge announced it had raised another $4 million in a second round of funding from Octopus Ventures and other investors that would be used towards expanding its staff, developing new products, and moving towards a rollout within 12 months.See also
- DBpediaDBpediaDBpedia is a project aiming to extract structured content from the information created as part of the Wikipedia project. This structured information is then made available on the World Wide Web. DBpedia allows users to query relationships and properties associated with Wikipedia resources,...
- Yago (database)YAGO (database)YAGO is a knowledge base developed at the Max-Planck-Institute Saarbrücken.The knowledge base contains information harvested from Wikipedia and linked to Wordnet....
- CycCycCyc is an artificial intelligence project that attempts to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base of everyday common sense knowledge, with the goal of enabling AI applications to perform human-like reasoning....
- Freebase (database)Freebase (database)Freebase is a large collaborative knowledge base consisting of metadata composed mainly by its community members. It is an online collection of structured data harvested from many sources, including individual 'wiki' contributions. Freebase aims to create a global resource which allows people to...
- Wolfram AlphaWolfram AlphaWolfram Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might...