CSC308: Artificial Intelligence

SESSSION 3: Knowledge Representation

-What to represent?
-Representation of the Facts
-Using Knowledge
-Properties for Knowledge Representation Systems
-Approaches to Knowledge Representation
-Knowledge Representation

What to Represent?
There are knowledge that deserves the privilege to be represented for future purposes. These
knowledge could be utilize to support the emergence of new techniques to improve the
functionality of an artificial intelligence system. Let’s first consider what kinds of knowledge
might need to be represented in AI systems:
i) Objects: Facts about objects in our world domain. For instance, Guitars have strings,
trumpets are brass instruments.
ii) Event: Actions that occur in our world. For instance, Steve Rode played the guitar in
Frank Zappa’s Band.
iii) Performance: A behavior like playing the guitar involves knowledge about how to do
things.
iv) Meta-Knowledge: Knowledge about what we know. For instance, Bobrow’s Robert
who plans a trip. It knows that it can read street signs along the way to find where it is.
Thus in solving problems in AI we must represent knowledge.
v) Facts: Truths about the real world and what we represent. This can be regarded as the
knowledge level which can be manipulated. This can be regarded as the symbol level
since we usually define the representation in terms of symbols that can be manipulated
by programs. We can structure these entities at two levels namely the knowledge and
symbol level. Knowledge level is at which facts are described and that of the symbol

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 is at which representations of objects are defined in terms of symbols that van be
manipulated in programs

Using Knowledge
We have briefly mentioned where knowledge is used in AI systems. Let’s consider a little further
to what applications and how knowledge may be used.
-Learning: Acquiring Knowledge- This is more than simply adding new facts to a knowledge base.
New data may have to be classified prior to storage for easy retrieval, e t c. Interaction and
inference with existing facts to avoid redundancy and replication in the knowledge. Also, so that
facts can be updated.
-Retrieval: The representation scheme used can have a critical effect on the efficiency of the
method. Humans are very good at it.
-Reasoning: Infer-facts from existing data.

Properties for Knowledge Representation Systems

The following properties should be possessed by a knowledge representation system.
-Representational Adequacy: The ability to represent the required knowledge.
-Inferential Adequacy: The ability to manipulate the knowledge represented to produce new
knowledge corresponding to that inferred from the original.
-Inferential Efficiency: The ability to direct the inferential mechanisms into the most productive
directions by storing appropriate guides;
-Acquisitional Efficiency: The ability to acquire new knowledge using automatic methods
wherever possible rather than reliance on human intervention. To date no single system optimizes
all of the above.

Approaches to Knowledge Representation

We briefly study some representation schemes discussed as follows;
i) Simple Relational Knowledge: The simplest way of storing facts is to use a relational
method where each fact about a set of objects is set out systematically in columns. This
representation gives little opportunity for inference, but it can be used as the knowledge
basis for inference engines.

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 ii) Inheritable Knowledge: Relational knowledge is made up of objects consisting of
attributes, corresponding associated values. Additionally, property inheritance enables
elements inherit values from being members of a class, data must be organized into a
hierarchy of classes.
iii) Inferential Knowledge: It represent knowledge as formal logic that can be used to
derive more facts, verifying the truths of new statements and guaranteed correctness.
iv) Procedural Knowledge: they are knowledge encoded in some procedures, small
program that know how to do specific things, how to proceed.

Knowledge Representation
There are various knowledge representation techniques available which are listed below;
-Logic
-Scripts
-Frames
-Semantic Net
-Partitioned Nets, Case Grammar theory
-Production Rules
-Inference System
-Forward and Backward Deduction
Theory of First Order Logic: Logic means drawing conclusions on the basis of conditions. Logic
can be defined as scientific study of the process of reasoning of a system of rules and procedures
that help in the reasoning process. The logic processed takes input as some information (called
premises) and produces some outputs called conclusions as depicted in Figure 3.1.
Input Output
Premises LOGIC SYSTEM
Inference
Facts Or Conclusion

Fig. 3.1: Example of Logic system

Logic can be classified into two categories namely Prepositional and Predicate logic.
Prepositional Logic: Simplest form of logic where all statements are prepositions. In prepositional
logic takes two values, either the preposition is true or if it is false. For instance, it is rainy,

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Diamond is a hard material. Consequently, Premise is a claim that a reason (or element of a set of
reasons) for, or objection against some other claim.

Predicate Logic: A predicate is defined as a relation that binds two atoms together. For instance,
Ravi likes aeroplane is represented as like (Ravi, aeroplane) here likes is a predicate that links two
atoms together (Ravi and Aeroplane). This predicate can be generate as like (X, Y) where X and
Y variable s meaning X likes Y.

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