Abstract:
I describe the Genesis story understanding system, and I explain why I believe Genesis sheds light on aspects of  intelligence that are uniquely human.  I show how Genesis exhibits aspects of common sense reasoning, conceptual understanding, cultural bias, hypothetical reflection, mental-modeling, mental illness, and self awareness as Genesis reads simple, 100-sentence stories adapted from sources such as Shakespeare’s plays and newspaper accounts of violence used in social-psychology studies.   I discuss how work on Genesis has been influenced by Minsky, Marr, Chomsky, Ullman, Spelke, Wilson, Morris and Peng, and an engineering perspective.