Paul Allen Wants to Teach Machines Common Sense - The New York Times

For more AI2 (Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence) Project Alexandria details, see this press release

"Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen said Wednesday that he was pumping an additional $125 million into his nonprofit computer research lab for an ambitious new effort to teach machines “common sense.”

The money for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence will about double the lab’s budget over the next three years, helping to fund existing research as well as the new effort, called Project Alexandria. In the years and decades to come, the lab hopes to create a database of fundamental knowledge that humans take for granted but machines have always lacked.

“To make real progress in A.I., we have to overcome the big challenges in the area of common sense,” said Mr. Allen, who founded the software giant Microsoft in the 1970s with Bill Gates."

Paul Allen Wants to Teach Machines Common Sense - The New York Times