The 1980s also saw the birth of Cyc , the first attempt to attack the commonsense knowledge problem directly , by creating a massive database that would contain all the mundane facts that the average person know . Douglas Lenat , who started and led the project , argued that there is no shortcut ― the only way for machines to know the meaning of human concepts is to teach them , one concept at a time , by hand . The project was not expected to be completed for many decades .