Skip to main content

Technology: Knowledge Engineering & Knowledge Representation

Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Representation are one of the fundamental parts of an Artificial Intelligence system. In this article, we will go through these concepts and understand how it is used in the field of AI.

Knowledge Engineering

First, let us understand what is Knowledge Engineering.

"Knowledge Engineering refers to all technical, scientific and social aspects involved in building, maintaining and using the knowledge-based system"


Knowledge-based systems or KBS is a computer program that reasons and uses the knowledge base to solve complex problems.


The subsystem of a KBS include:
1. Knowledge base: It is a computer program which stores complex structured and unstructured information that a computer system uses. This exhibits opposite properties of relational database systems. Knowledge base stores structured data but not as a table with numbers and strings, but as pointers to other objects that in turn has additional pointers. It is represented as an object model which has class, subclass, and instances. This is also referred to as Ontologies.

2. User- Interface: Human-Computer Interaction.

3. Inference Engine: Applies logical rule to the knowledge base to deduce new information.

KBS was primarily known as expert systems which were first developed by AI researchers.

What does this expert systems do?? 
1. It performs certain complex tasks
2. Aide human in some specific tasks
3. Replace human for some tasks

The earlier KBS were mostly expert systems. We can say that all expert systems are KBS but not all KBS are expert systems. The first system that was developed was the rule-based expert system. These systems used knowledge explicitly rather than a procedural code.

Advantages of rule-based expert systems:
1. Acquisition and maintenance are easy since there was no need for programmers. The domain experts can define and maintain the ruled themselves.
2. The knowledge here is used explicitly which allowed the systems to reason regarding how they got the results and explain them to the user.
3. These systems develop conclusion from data with strong reasoning

As the KBS became more complex, the representation also became more sophisticated. The knowledge base became more and more structured. The reasoning is based on both independent rules as well as interaction with the knowledge base. The recent advancement has been to adopt technologies to develop systems which use the internet. The internet has a large amount of complex and unstructured data which is difficult to fit in any data model. The KBS technique of classifying data and getting it into a proper format can be used here. These systems are called Semantic Web.

Knowledge Representation


We have gone through the KBS systems and now let us see what is Knowledge Representation (KR). KR defines how the information is represented so that the computer system can understand and utilize it solve complex problems. It is also known as Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.

KR justifies that the conventional procedural code is not enough to solve complex problems. KR makes a complex software easy to define and maintain procedural code. KR is connected to the automated reasoning engine which enables them to reason, make inferences, add new knowledge etc. All KBS have reasoning or inference engine as part of the system.

Knowledge Representation Framework:
1. Reasoning without taking actions
2. Answer to the questions (Ontological Commitment)
3. Intelligent reasoning, sanctioning inferences and recommending inferences.
4. A computational environment where thinking is accomplished
5. Language

Some of the examples of KR include semantic nets, system architecture, frames, rule, and ontologies.

Characteristics of Knowledge Representation & Reasoning:
1. The primitive framework used to represent knowledge like semantics, frames, rules etc.
2. Capability to have information of its own state which is also known as meta-representation
3. Non- monotonic reasoning which allows various kinds of hypothetical reasoning.
4. Reasoning efficiency

This is the brief explanation of Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Representation. Both in itself is a very vast topic. There are so many terminologies involved and I will explain all of them in my next article.
       





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Trials of Morrigan Crow (Nevermoor)

Blurb Not only does Morrigan Crow's curse means she's blamed for all bad luck, she's also destined to die on her eleventh birthday. She bravely accepts her doom, but in a very surprising twist of fate, before the clock strikes twelve on Eventide and the howling shadow wolves arrive, she is whisked away by a remarkable man called Jupiter North and taken to the city of Nevermoor. Morrigan cannot believe her luck when she is given a once in a lifetime chance to join the Wundrous Society -- a place of mystery, magic, and protection. Only first she must pass four impossible trials using an exceptional talent (which she doesn't have). Racing against time can Morrigan claim her place in the wild, Wundrous city before the shadows catch up with her? Review Amazing !!!! Morrigan Crow is one of the amazing characters in this book. She is smart, witty, kind and brave. She is lonely and she never had friends. The only thing she wanted was people to love...

Book Review: The Underground Railroad

Blurb Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than the most; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is approaching womanhood where it is clear that even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape the North.   In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box-car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Thus Cora embarks on a harrowing journey, seeking true freedom, pursued relentlessly by a terrifying slave catcher named Ridgeway.  As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africa...

Book Review: The Fisher Queen's Dynasty by Kavita Kane

Blurb 'I learned to love like a man- to love without feelings. And I shall never forget this lesson.' Matsyagandha, Kali, Yojanagandha, Daseyi - the queen of Hastinapur, Satyavati. Abandoned as a baby, preyed on by a Rishi, she hardens herself, determined that the next time she is with the man, she will be the one to win. And win she does: the throne of Hastinapur for herself and the promise that her sons will be heirs to the kingdom. But at what cost? In a palace where she is disdained and scorned, Satyavati must set aside her own loss and pain if she is to play the game of politics. She learns to be ruthless, unscrupulous- traits that estrange her from everyone around. Everyone, except the man she cheated of his birthright.  A piercing, insightful look at the grand matriarch of the Kuru family, the woman who set off the sequence of events that ended in the bloody battle of Kurukshetra. "The Fisher Queen's Dynasty" will re-align your reading of ...