Artificial Intelligence Notes

Individual semantic networks and frame systems may have specialized links and inference
procedures, but no hard and fast rules about what kinds of objects and links are good in general
for knowledge representation.

embody specific notions of what types of

objects and relations are permitted. They stand for powerful theories of how AI programs can
represent and use knowledge about common situations.

It is the theory of how to represent the kind of knowledge about events that is usually contained
in natural language sentences. The goal is to represent the knowledge in a way that
Facilitates drawing inferences from the sentences.
Is independent of the language in which the sentences are originally stated.
CD provides a structure into which nodes representing information can be placed a specific set of
primitives at a given level of granularity.

Representation of Conceptual Dependency:

In CD representation of actions are built from a set of primitive Acts.

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A second set of CD building blocks is the set of allowable dependencies among the
conceptualizations described in a sentence. There are 4 primitive conceptual categories from
which dependency structures can be built.

In addition, dependency structures are themselves conceptualizations and can serve as

components of larger dependency structures.

The dependencies among conceptualizations correspond to semantic relations among the

underlying concepts. The contains the rules; the contains examples of their-
use and the contains an English version of each example. The rules are interpreted as
follows:
describes the relationship between an actor and the event he or she causes. This is a
two-way dependency since neither actor nor event can be considered primary. The letter
p above the dependency link indicates past tense.
describes the relationship between a PP and a PA that is being asserted to describe
it. Many state descriptions, such as height, are represented in CD as numeric scales.

describes the relationship between two PPs, one of which belongs to the set
defined by the other.
describes the relationship between a PP and an attribute that has already been
predicated of it. The direction of the arrow is toward the PP being described.
describes the relationship between two PPs, one of which provides a particular
kind of information about the other. The three most common types of information to be
provided in this way are
o possession (shown as POSS-BY),
o location (shown as LOC) and
o physical containment (shown as CONT).
The direction of the arrow is again toward the concept being described.

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describes the relationship between an ACT and the PP that is the object of that
ACT. The direction of the arrow is toward the ACT since the context of the specific ACT
determines the meaning of the object relation.
describes the relationship between an ACT and the source and the recipient of the
ACT.
describes the relationship between an ACT and the instrument with which it is
performed. The instrument must always be a full conceptualization (i.e., it must contain
an ACT), not just a single physical object.

describes the relationship between an ACT and its physical source and destination.
represents the relationship between a PP and a state in which it started and
another in which it ended.
describes the relationship between one conceptualization and another that causes
it. Notice that the arrows indicate dependency of one conceptualization on another and
so point in the opposite direction of the implication arrows. The two forms of the rule
describe the cause of an action and the cause of a state change.

describes the relationship between a conceptualization and the time at which the
event it describes occurred.
describes the relationship between one conceptualization and another that is the
time of the first. The example for this rule also shows how CD exploits a model of the
human information processing system.
describes relationship between a conceptualization and the place at which it
occurred.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

Conceptualizations representing events can be modified in a variety of ways to supply the

information normally indicated in language by the tense, mood or aspect of a verb form. The set
of conceptual tenses includes

Using these primitives involves fewer inference rules.

Many inference rules are already represented in CD structure.
The holes in the initial structure help to focus on the points still to be established.

Knowledge must be decomposed into fairly low level primitives.

Impossible or difficult to find correct set of primitives.
A lot of inference may still be required.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

Representations can be complex even for relatively simple actions. Consider:

.
Complex representations require a lot of storage

( ) -- model
natural language understanding.
( ) -- Scripts to understand stories. See next section.
( ) -- Scripts to understand stories.

We present a mechanism for representing knowledge about common sequences of events.

A is a structure that describes stereotyped sequence of events in a particular event. A script
consists of a set of slots. Associated with each slot may be some information about what kinds of
values it may contain as well as a default value to be used if no other information is available.

A script is a structure that prescribes a set of circumstances which could be expected to follow on
from one another. It is similar to a thought sequence or a chain of situations which could be
anticipated. It could be considered to consist of a number of slots or frames but with more
specialized roles.

Scripts provide an ability for default reasoning when information is not available that directly
states that an action occurred. So we may assume, unless otherwise stated, that a diner at a
restaurant was served food, that the diner paid for the food, and that the dinner was served by a
waiter/waitress.

Scripts are beneficial because:

• Events tend to occur in known runs or patterns.
• Causal relationships between events exist.
• Entry conditions exist which allow an event to take place
• Prerequisites exist upon events taking place. E.g. when a student progresses through a
degree scheme or when a purchaser buys a house.

The important components of the script are:

these must be satisfied before events in the script can occur.
Conditions that will be true after events in script occur.
Slots representing objects involved in events.
Persons involved in the events.
Variations on the script. Different tracks may share components of
the same script.
The sequence of events that occur. Events are represented
in conceptual dependency form.

Scripts are useful in describing certain situations such as robbing a bank. This might involve:
Getting a gun.
Hold up a bank.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

Escape with the money.

Here the might be Policeman, .

Gun, . The might be:
Loot, . is poor.
Bag, is destitute.
Getaway car, . The might be:
The might be: has more money.
Robber, . is angry.
Cashier, . is in a state of shock.
Bank Manager, . is shot.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

The script does not contain typical actions although there are options such as whether the
customer was pleased or not. There are multiple paths through the scenes to make for a robust
script what would a “going to the movies” script look like? Would it have similar props, actors,
scenes? How about “going to class”?

• Ability to predict events.

• A single coherent interpretation may be build up from a collection of observations.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

• Less general than frames.

• May not be suitable to represent all kinds of knowledge.

CYC is a very large knowledge base project aimed at capturing human commonsense knowledge.
The goal of CYC is to encode the large body of knowledge that is so obvious that it is easy to
forget to state it explicitly. Such a knowledge base could then be combined with specialized
knowledge bases to produce systems that are less brittle than most of the ones available today.

-- Specialized knowledge bases are . Hard to encode new situations and

non-graceful degradation in performance. Commonsense based knowledge bases should
have a firmer foundation.
-- Knowledge representation may not be suitable for AI. Commonsense
strategies could point out where difficulties in content may affect the form.
-- Should allow greater communication among systems with common
bases and assumptions.

Building an immense knowledge base is a staggering task. There are two possibilities for acquiring
this knowledge automatically:
1. In order for a system to learn a great deal, it must already know a
great deal. In particular, systems with a lot of knowledge will be able to employ
powerful analogical reasoning.
2. Humans extend their own knowledge by reading
books and talking with other humans.

By hand.
Special CYCL language:
LISP like.
Frame based
Multiple inheritance
Slots are fully fledged objects.
Generalized inheritance -- any link not just and .

We require special implicit knowledge or commonsense such as:

We only die once.
You stay dead.
You cannot learn of anything when dead.
Time cannot go backwards.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

Strong Slot and Filler Structures (Continued)

Conceptual Dependency Examples:

Consider the sentence, “Bill threatened John with a broken Nose”.

The CD representation of the information contained in the sentence is shown above. It says that
Bill informed John that he (Bill) will do something to break John’s nose. Bill did this so that John
will believe that if he (John) does something (different from what Bill will do to break his nose),
then Bill will break John’s nose. In this representation, the word believe has been used to simplify
the example. But the idea behind believe can be represented in CD as MTRANS of a fact into
John’s memory. The actions do1 and do2 are dummy placeholders that refer to some as yet
unspecified actions.

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

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Artificial Intelligence Notes

CYCL
 CYCs knowledge is encoded in a representation language called CYCL.
 CYCL is a frame based system that incorporates most of the techniques.
 Generalizes the notion of inheritance so that properties can be inherited
along any link, not just isa and instance.
 CYCL contains a constraint language that allows the expression of arbitrary
first-order logical expressions.

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