Tauchain: The Automated Webslueth? The Sherlock Holmes Bot concept for discussion
Tauchain progress and the automation of Websluething
Recently there has been major progress with TML. Ohad has released an optimized and fully functioning meta language which can be used to define new languages. This ability is critical for Tauchain because Tauchain will require in specific KRR (knowledge representation reasoning) languages. One example of such a KRR is Attempto Controlled English, and any other controlled language can be implemented using TML. At this moment in time Ohad is working on the parser and in particular the lexical analysis/syntax analysis portion. All of this can be witnessed by observing the commits on Github.
For those who study the topic you would know the name Doug Lenat. To fully understand what Tauchain could be capable of, it helps to watch this video:
In the video it is mentioned that terrorism can be detected. This is in fact possible to implement over Tauchain and I'll discuss the idea below.
The Sherlock Holmes Bot
The required elements to have a Sherlock Holmes Bot is to have both a common sense knowledge base and reasoning capability which can connect logical dots between events. Also necessary is to have a web sensing mechanism similar to the project Websensors.
Sherlock Holmes in specific used deductive reasoning to solve crimes. If an event happens somewhere in the world then the data in most cases is uploaded to the Internet. This could be news articles, it could be Twitter posts, it could be photographs or something else. The sensing agent would simply provide the service of scanning the web detecting different events. It could for example detect news articles as they are uploaded and capture relevant topics.
In the situation where there is a news article about a pipe bomb or a suspicious explosion then the sensing agent would be able to detect this in near real time. The data then once captured could be fed into Tauchain where the reasoning capability and knowledge base could provide an investigative function. In the case of terrorist attacks the logical dots would be connected by way of deductive reasoning data such as the chain of events. Sentiment data from social media could also be captured by way of websensor agents which could again be a factor.
Of course there are some problems such as can you trust the news sources? If the news sources can be trusted to provide accurate data about real world events then Tauchain could provide a relevant result under this assumption. This would provide a use case where the knowledge base of Tauchain could be used for anti-terror/crime fighting in an automated capacity.
Examples:
Events which seem connected. Tauchain may be able to help with this too by connecting events, places, apply common sense reasoning..
Such as a certain person wearing certain clothing spotted at a certain place (from trusted data source) and also a certain person, wearing the exact same clothing, spotted at another place (from another trusted data source), in a time frame where it is logical that it could be the same person.
Tauchain would be able to tell you it's possible to be the same person due to the same clothes, and in locations near enough to each other.
The main problem is you have to trust the data sources fully. Fake data sources can make the results you get useless. If for example data sources lie about what they see then the deductive reasoning would produce a result based on lies. If the data sources tell the truth then the deductive reasoning would produce a result which is relevant to solving the crime or potentially preventing the next terrorist attack.
Conclusion
Law enforcement, anti-terrorism, all of this can be represented in Tauchain. First, there could be development of an anti-terrorism knowledge base or and anti-crime knowledge base. The Dept of Homeland Security, Interpol, or any other similar agency could populate these knowledge bases, sharing knowledge to achieve shared objectives. Tauchain would be able to reason over any knowledge base just as Cyc currently is able to do.
What Tauchain can't do (in current design) is provide sensors, or provide trust. In other words if you have trusted sensors and data you can trust then you can add it to a knowledge base to reason over it. If you cannot determine what the facts are then no amount of reasoning or logic can fix that.
All people interested in fighting crime or terrorism should be able to see the immediate potential of this. If you have one shared knowledge base on Tauchain with all relevant knowledge about terrorist or criminal groups, their members, leaders, ideology, founders, sponsors, affiliations, facilities, locations, finances, capabilities, intentions, behaviors, tactics, and full descriptions of specific terrorist events, and then you can use automated reasoning over this shared data? In my opinion there is quite a bit of potential there.
References
Deaton, C., Shepard, B., Klein, C., Mayans, C., Summers, B., Brusseau, A., ... & Lenat, D. (2005, May). The comprehensive terrorism knowledge base in cyc. In Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Intelligence Analysis.
Though surely, dapps could be designed which bridge Tauchain’s capabilities with those of other chains with IoT functionality to leverage the sensors linked through them, no...?
When do you expect Tauchain to be released on a mainnet?
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TML is the meta language which will be used to define KRR languages. It is released now and is undergoing upgrades to add parsing. Some features to be added after parsing are Futamura projections.
After we get TML with Futamura projections, then Ohad can write TML in TML.
After TML is written in TML, then I expect work will begin on the alpha. So I would say for this year expect the alpha release if development continues at the current pace. I don't know how long it will take to go from alpha release to beta release.
Sounds exciting, I already have some Agoras Token but its hard to keep up with the latest developments. SobI probably will just let them sit and forget about it until a MVP product is out in 2years or so...thanks for the information.
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MVP in my opinion is complete and on Github but let Ohad announce this when he is satisfied with it. In terms of a functioning alpha this is coming in my opinion this year. If you waited this long what is several more months?
If you are thinking about buying AGRS and getting a stake in Tauchain I would say now it's pre-alpha which means it's early.
Dude Tauchain is cool but it has nothing to do with anti terrorism.
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Anyone can give it any function, including anti terrorism. It all depends on what you decide to do with the tool. I predict there will be great demand for anti terrorism functions because people like to protect lives and property.
The tool can be used to any function, that's true.
But terrorism is usually used as an excuse to justify government surveillance and is really an insignificant threat to the average citizen (toddler with arms accidents account for more deaths than terrorism).
Terrorism is not a random act of madness, it has a vengeance component. You don't simply invade foreign countries, bomb them and then expect nobody to hate you.
So if the Tau is smart enough to investigate a terrorist act to the full extent then it would be able to pinpoint the very act of violence that caused a person to become a terrorist in first place, which may boil down to an order to invade a country.
I totally understand how you feel about government surveillance. Personally I don't like it either. Unfortunately the surveillance is here, it's not going to go away, so if we are going to be under surveillance why not use it for saving lives and protecting people?
If we are under all this surveillance why are terrorists still able to take many lives with so much ease? The reason is more surveillance simply means more sensors which means more data collection, but without the ability to process the data it is of no immediate value to have the data collected. The other issue with surveillance is data leakage, whether it be by hackers who break into databases or inside jobs, the data collected for the function of anti-terrorism should not be leaked in my opinion because that data is not owned by the public and is sensitive or perhaps even classified.
Better technology might be able to guarantee via cryptography and hardware that the data collected cannot be leaked and cannot be used for any other purpose than the purpose it was originally collected for. In other words, the code aligned perfectly with the law, and the processing of the data according to the permissions on the bits.
People become terrorists for many reasons. I don't think Tauchain will necessarily be able to pinpoint the reason. I do think Tauchain would be able to allow law enforcement to more efficiently and effectively direct their very limited resources.
It helps no one if law enforcement and governments spend lots of time putting you and me under intense surveillance wasting many thousands of dollars while the actual terrorists fall through the cracks. Technology which could help reduce the risk that innocent people would be harassed by law enforcement or the government in my opinion is good.
You mention terrorism has a vengeance component? But the terrorists don't always direct their attacks at military units. Terrorists often attack civilians (not troops). It's one thing if you were to say the terrorists attacking troops are doing it because of warfare and I could believe that. That is counter-insurgency but it's not the only kind of terrorism and not the kind which puts civilians under the most threat.
Civilians are under threat when terrorists (often domestic) attack civilian targets such as mosques, churches, schools, or other so called "soft targets".
Even if some people can agree with some of these terrorists politically and think it's revenge or "justice", it's still illegal, it's still murder. In my opinion we do not have the authority to take justice into our own hands for political ideology, religious ideology. The people who think it is somehow justice are merely creating a sense of injustice in other people who may have had nothing to do with any of it.
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