NOTE:
Since this file was produced several of the documents referred to in it have been removed or moved. This is particularly true of the DARPA documents. Apparently DARPA has no concern to preserve the history of its activities and deliberations.
Simon Colton at Imperial College, London, set up a web site for this
project here:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~sgc/grand_challenge
which includes the summary edited by Mike Denham (14th Jan 2003)
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~sgc/grand_challenge/proposal.pdf
One of the documents http://www.eps.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/BAA02-21/SynopsisP.html states:
Cognitive systems have a number of differentiating characteristics, but in short, they can be characterized as systems that know what they are doing. Such systems will have the ability to reason about their environment (including other systems), their goals, and their own capabilities; this reasoning will be able to take advantage of substantial amounts of appropriately represented knowledge. Cognitive systems will be able to learn both from their experiences and by being taught. They will be capable of natural interaction with humans, and will be able to explain their reasoning in natural terms. They will be able to form teams that succeed at goals that cannot be achieved as individuals. And, notably, they will be robust in the face of surprises provided by the environment; the avoidance of the "brittleness" of the expert systems of the past will be a distinguishing feature
A small workshop to discuss the DARPA project was held in Virginia 3-6 November 2002.
The white papers and slide presentations are (or were) available at the workshop web-site: http://www.dsic-web.net/meetings/oy8guwod/index.html
And a paper by Minsky, Singh and Sloman arising out of that symposium http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/StThomas-AIMag.pdf
Push Singh's thesis and other related documents http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/
Maintained by A.Sloman
Updated: 29 Dec 2006