2010

Faculty of computer and informatics

Emad Elsaid Hamed Mohamed

[KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTAION
IN AI FIELD]
A technical report about knowledge representation in artificial intelligence field, abstract introduction,
languages and notation of KR, ontology languages, linking structures and referencing.
Content
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
2.1.What is AI?
2.2.What is Knowledge?
2.3.What is knowledge representation?
2.3.1. Reasoning
2.4.Why we need Knowledge representation?
3. Knowledge representation areas
3.1.Representation languages and notation
3.2.Logical representation
3.2.1. What is logic?
3.2.2. Propositional logic
3.2.3. Predicate logic
3.2.4. First order logic
3.2.5. Higher order logic
3.3. Non-logic representation
3.3.1. Production rules
3.3.2. Semantic networks
3.3.3. Frame representation
3.4. Ontology languages
3.4.1. Web ontology languages (OWL)
3.4.2. Description logic
3.5. Linking structures and cross referencing
4. Conclusion
5. References

2
 1. Abstract
The existing of data in AI application and the need for reasoning and gainting new
knowledge from existing one has grown enough to branch a new area of AI field
that is oriented to the research of the best suitable way to represent data and
hence to gain knowledge in a fast way.

It could be seen that every domain of knowledge has its properties and
specifications so the knowledge representation (a.k.a KR) is oriented to get the
best general way to represent all kind of domains in a standard way.

By time some languages started to form a standard way of representation like the
logical representation or the ontological representation or by forming a semantic
networks or leverage it to contain frames of knowledge.

Semantic networks In specific gives links between structure the attention needed,
as the first order logic (or higher) were not enough to describe these links.

The attention to linking structures increased to give us a new ways of linking that
made great experience to all of use every day like text hyperlinks and resource
description framework (RDF)

3
 2. Introduction
2.1. What is Artificial intelligence (AI)?
Intelligence is a wide term that describes the min properties like capacity,
abstract thoughts, reasoning, understanding, learning, planning and problem
solving [1].

Intelligence of human brain is the study case although some other organics has
intelligence like some plants and mammal animals, but it seems that humans have
the most complete intelligence properties.

Artificial intelligence is a field of computer science that tries to add intelligence to

computer machines in the domain of acting and/or thinking [2].

2.2. What is knowledge?

There is no single definition for knowledge but we can use these definitions to get
a general view of knowledge:

1. Expertise of skill acquired by person that is gained by experience or

education.
2. Facts and Information known in particular field or in general.
3. Awareness with facts or situations and how to deal with it [3].

2.3. What is knowledge representation?

It’s an area of AI whose goal is to represent knowledge in a specific domain in a
symbolic system or other hierarchical representation [4].

2.3.1. Reasoning
Is the act of gaining a new knowledge from existing one, using inference methods
such as heuristic search, logical reasoning, backward chaining …etc [4].

4
2.4. Why we need knowledge representation?
In order to process the information and inference we need the data to be in a
form that a machine could parse easily and to apply inference methods to gain
new knowledge, a better representation is better performance of inference and
reasoning, so KR is an important area of Artificial intelligence field.

5
3. Knowledge representation areas
There are tons of methods to represent knowledge and every one of them has its
pros and cons, that paper will present some not all of them describing how it’s
used and notation

3.1. Representation languages and notation

Some opinions say that we should simulate human mind in storing and
manipulating data and also human natural language, but unfortunately human
brain capabilities in processing natural language are not fully revealed so, that
opinion is full of imperfections that are the source of error.

So there is several Artificial intelligence symbolic languages and notations that is

structured to define knowledge, some of them has been made for specific domain
and others for general domain

3.2. Logical representation

3.2.1. What is logic?

It is the study of sentences (arguments), and it is used in most of the reasoning
and proving the truth of a collection of statements.

3.2.2. Propositional logic

It is mathematical logic that uses axioms, symbols and formulas to proof
theorems [5].

Syntax:

1. Propositions (assumptions) : “term is true”, “term is false”

2. Connectives : and(˄), or(˅), not(⌐), implies(→), iff(↔)
3. Brackets : for higher priority or grouping (Q˄R) ˅ (R˄P)

Semantic: it assumes some symbols with truth values and use connectors to
affect their value that gives us the latest desired result [6].

6
3.2.3 Predicate logic
A formal system that used as mathematical logic, and contain variable symbols
which could be quantified using two quantifiers there exists (∃) and for all (∀) [7].

Syntax:

1. Atoms: a symbol without any structure e.g. ( Ahmed, like_cafee, love_food

)[6]
2. Predicates : sentences that could define :
a. properties : e.g. is_hot( cafee )
b. relations : e.g. like( Ahmed, cafee )
3. Complex structure: contain atoms with combination like in first order logic
or higher order logic every atom is a predicate.
e.g. ∃ahmed ( like(ahmed,cafee) ˄ like(ahmed,tea) → like( ahmed,
drinks))[8]

3.2.4. First order logic

It is a formal logic system used in math, philosophy, computer science that
include propositional logic, predicate logic and quantification theory, and has the
property that quantifiers could be applied to atoms only not sets like higher order
logic [8].

Syntax:

1. Constants: objects like ( ahmed, apple, cafee )

2. Predicates: defines relations like( ahmed, cafee )
3. Functions: transform objects parent_of( cafee )
4. Variables: act as container for any object e.g ( X, Person )
5. Quantifiers: there exists (∃) and for all (∀)

3.2.5. Higher order logic

Just like the first order logic but has been expanded to allow quantifiers for
predicates and allow predicates to take other predicates as arguments [9].
7
3.3. Non-logic representation
3.3.1 Production rules
Production rules is used for producing valid strings from language alphabet, and
could take the form of if-then which check for condition if valid then gives the fire
the action.

Syntax:

1. G : the symbol represent grammar itself that contains these sets :

a. N : nonterminal symbols (not complete string)
b. Σ : terminal symbols (complete string)
c. P : set of production rules
d. S : start symbol Є N, that is a seed for P to generate valid string

Example:

 G contain N={X,Y}, Σ={a,b,c}, P= { S→aSa, S→bSb, S→cSc, S→aSb…etc}

We can apply different N on P to get these strings: aaa, aba, caaac, aacab
…etc[10].
 If (sky is raining) then (open umbrella)[6]

3.3.2. Semantic networks

Semantic network is a graphical representation of knowledge using symbols and
arrows relations with relation type on the arrow [11].

e.g. you can reason from the side

graph that human is a mammal and
lion is mammal, and lion is an animal,
and mammals are some of them
animal.

8
3.3.3. Frame representation
In order to expand the capabilities of semantic networks an object in semantic
networks is expanded to be a frame, every frame has some properties, the frame
representation follow the slot/filler approach.

Inheritance could be applied to frames where frame inherit properties of another

frame.

When agent comes to a new situation a frame slots could be filled with values to
generate new object [6].

Note: the templates of CLIPS are just what are we talking about if represented in
a graph.

3.4. Ontology languages

Are languages base on the generalization Frame representation of a specific
domain, it also often include reasoning rules to support processing of the
knowledge CycL is the first generation of that kind of languages [12].

3.4.1. Web ontology languages (OWL)

They are set of languages used in semantic web to serialize information, these
languages gained greater interest in industry and academy [13].

The OWL2 contain famous serialization languages such as: HTML, XML and
RDF/XML schema [13].

3.5. Linking structures and cross referencing

Linking structures and objects got several ways varied from production rules,
edges in graphical representation, Hyper link in modern web languages, and RDF
is gaining more attention in the web nowadays plus some global protocols to
exchange data between website and servers on the WWW.

9
 4. Conclusion
Knowledge representation is an important area of artificial intelligence field, and
it has been proven that research in this area was a force power in pushing the
Web, and it is much related to mathematics and theorems proving.

5. References
1. Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
2. Artificial intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI
3. Knowledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge
4. Knowledge representation and reasoning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_representation_and_reasoning
5. Propositional logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositional_logic
6. Artificial intelligence knowledge representation
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:E9s3hgucOakJ:www.doc.ic.a
c.uk/~sgc/teaching/v231/lecture4.ppt+knowledge+representaion+in+AI
7. Predicate logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_logic
8. First order logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic
9. Higher order logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_order_logic
10. Formal Grammar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_grammar
11. Semantic network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_network
12. CycL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CycL
13. OWL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language

10