Marvin Minksy apparently thinks the Cyc project is the best thing going in AI research right now.

Jeez. That's great if you think intelligence is just a giant relational database. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that Cyc is an example of the worst AI research going on these days. If Cyc is anywhere near intelligent, then so is Google.

So no, intelligence isn't just storing and retrieving commonsense facts about the world. It is creating a feedback loop between sensory input of the world and a highly-parallel processor with which to parse that data and integrate it into an internal context.

Cyc doesn't "know" which way to hold a glass any more than Google knows who won the War of the Roses, and to suggest so is absurd.