Mindpixel

Mindpixel is a World Wide Web-based collaborative artificial intelligence project which aims to create a database of millions of human validated true/false statements, or probabilistic propositions. Participants in the project create one-line statements which will be objectively true or false to 20 other anonymous participants. In order to submit their statement they must first check the true/false validity of 20 such statements submitted by others. Participants whose replies are consistently out of step with the majority have their status downgraded and are eventually excluded. Likewise, participants who make contributions which others cannot agree are objectively true or false have their status downgraded. A validated true/false statement is called a mindpixel.

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The project enlists the efforts of thousands of participants and claims to be "The planet's largest artificial intelligence effort".

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The project is led by Chris McKinstry, a computer scientist and former Very Large Telescope operator for the European Southern Observatory in Chile. McKinstry believes that the Mindpixel database could be used in conjunction with a neural net to produce a body of human "common sense" knowledge which would have market value. Participants in the project are awarded shares in any future value according to the number of mindpixels they have successfully created.

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Mindpixel started in 2000 and has 1.4 million mindpixels as of January 2004.

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It was developed out of the earlier MISTIC (1996) AI project, also created by McKinstry.

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The database and its software is known as GAC, which stands for "Generic Artificial Consciousness" and is pronounced Jak.

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A selection of 80 thousand validated mindpixels can be seen at the mindpixel site here http://www.mindpixel.com/chris/gac80k-06-july-2005.html (3.5mb of text)

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On 20th September 2005 Mindpixel lost its free server and it no longer operational. It is being re written by Chris McKinstry as Mindpixel 2 and will apeear on a new server in France.

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Mindpixel data is being utilised (in 2005) by Michael Spivey of Cornell university in his Language Action Perception Dynamics Laboratory to study theories in high-level reasoning.

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