UNIT-III

Knowledge Representation
• Human beings are good at understanding, reasoning and
interpreting knowledge. And using this knowledge, they are able to
perform various actions in the real world. But how do machines
perform the same?we will learn about Knowledge Representation
in AI and how it helps the machines perform reasoning and
interpretation using Artificial Intelligence in the following sequence:
• What is Knowledge Representation?
• Different Types of Knowledge
• Cycle of Knowledge Representation
• What is the relation between Knowledge & Intelligence?
• Techniques of Knowledge Representation
• Representation Requirements
• Approaches to Knowledge Representation with Example
What is Knowledge Representation?
• Knowledge Representation in AI describes the representation of knowledge. Basically,
it is a study of how the beliefs, intentions, and judgments of an intelligent agent can
be expressed suitably for automated reasoning. One of the primary purposes of
Knowledge Representation includes modeling intelligent behavior for an agent.
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR, KRR) represents information from the
real world for a computer to understand and then utilize this knowledge to
solve complex real-life problems like communicating with human beings in natural
language. Knowledge representation in AI is not just about storing data in a database, it
allows a machine to learn from that knowledge and behave intelligently like a human
being.
The different kinds of knowledge that need to be represented in AI include:
• Objects
• Events
• Performance
• Facts
• Meta-Knowledge
• Knowledge-base.
• Following are the kind of knowledge which needs to be represented in AI systems:
1. Object
• All the facts about objects in our world domain. E.g., Guitars contains strings, trumpets are
brass instruments.
2. Events
• Events are the actions which occur in our world.
3. Performance
• It describe behavior which involves knowledge about how to do things.
4. Meta-knowledge
• It is knowledge above knowledge is known as Meta -knowledge.
5. Facts
• Facts are the truths about the real world and what we represent.
6. Knowledge-Base
• The central component of the knowledge-based agents is the knowledge base. It is represented
as KB. The Knowledgebase is a group of the Sentences (Here, sentences are used as a technical
term and not identical with the English language).
Different Types of Knowledge
There are 5 types of Knowledge such as:
• Declarative Knowledge – It includes concepts, facts, and objects and
expressed in a declarative sentence.
• Structural Knowledge – It is a basic problem-solving knowledge that
describes the relationship between concepts and objects.
• Procedural Knowledge – This is responsible for knowing how to do
something and includes rules, strategies, procedures, etc.
• Meta Knowledge – Meta Knowledge defines knowledge about other
types of Knowledge.
• Heuristic Knowledge – This represents some expert knowledge in the
field or subject.
• These are the important types of Knowledge Representation in AI.
• Cycle of Knowledge Representation in AI
• Artificial Intelligent Systems usually consist of various components to
display their intelligent behavior. Some of these components include:
• Perception
• Learning
• Knowledge Representation & Reasoning
• Planning
• Execution
Here is an example to show the different components of the
system and how it works:
Example

The above diagram shows the interaction of an AI system with

the real world and the components involved in showing
intelligence.
• The Perception component retrieves data or information from the environment. with the help of
this component, you can retrieve data from the environment, find out the source of noises and
check if the AI was damaged by anything. Also, it defines how to respond when any sense has
been detected.
• Then, there is the Learning Component that learns from the captured data by the perception
component. The goal is to build computers that can be taught instead of programming them.
Learning focuses on the process of self-improvement. In order to learn new things, the system
requires knowledge acquisition, inference, acquisition of heuristics, faster searches, etc.
• The main component in the cycle is Knowledge Representation and Reasoning which shows the
human-like intelligence in the machines. Knowledge representation is all about understanding
intelligence. Instead of trying to understand or build brains from the bottom up, its goal is to
understand and build intelligent behavior from the top-down and focus on what an agent needs to
know in order to behave intelligently. Also, it defines how automated reasoning procedures can
make this knowledge available as needed.
• The Planning and Execution components depend on the analysis of knowledge representation
and reasoning. Here, planning includes giving an initial state, finding their preconditions and
effects, and a sequence of actions to achieve a state in which a particular goal holds. Now once
the planning is completed, the final stage is the execution of the entire process.
• So, these are the different components of the cycle of Knowledge Representation in AI
• What is the Relation between Knowledge & Intelligence?
• In the real world, knowledge plays a vital role in intelligence as well as
creating artificial intelligence.
• It demonstrates the intelligent behavior in AI agents or systems.
• It is possible for an agent or system to act accurately on some input
only when it has the knowledge or experience about the input.
Let’s take an example to understand the relationship:
 

• In this example, there is one decision-maker whose actions are justified by sensing the

environment and using knowledge. But, if we remove the knowledge part here, it will
not be able to display any intelligent behavior.
Techniques of Knowledge Representation in AI
There are four techniques of representing knowledge such as:
Logical Representation 
• Logical representation is a language with some definite rules which deal with
propositions and has no ambiguity in representation.
• It represents a conclusion based on various conditions and lays down some
important communication rules.
• Also, it consists of precisely defined syntax and semantics which supports the
sound inference. Each sentence can be translated into logics using syntax and
semantics.
Advantages:
• Logical representation helps to perform logical reasoning.
• This representation is the basis for the programming languages.
• Disadvantages:
• Logical representations have some restrictions and are challenging to work with.
• This technique may not be very natural, and inference may not be very efficient.
• Semantic Network Representation
• Semantic networks work as an alternative of predicate logic for
knowledge representation.
• In Semantic networks, you can represent your knowledge in the form
of graphical networks.
• This network consists of nodes representing objects and arcs which
describe the relationship between those objects.
• Also, it categorizes the object in different forms and links those
objects.
This representation consist of two types of relations:
• IS-A relation (Inheritance)
• Kind-of-relation
Advantages:
• Semantic networks are a natural representation of knowledge.
• Also, it conveys meaning in a transparent manner.
• These networks are simple and easy to understand.
Disadvantages:
• Semantic networks take more computational time at runtime.
• Also, these are inadequate as they do not have any equivalent
quantifiers.
• These networks are not intelligent and depend on the creator of the
system.
Frame Representation
• A frame is a record like structure that consists of a collection of attributes and values to describe an
entity in the world.
• These are the AI data structure that divides knowledge into substructures by representing stereotypes
situations.
• Basically, it consists of a collection of slots and slot values of any type and size. Slots have names and
values which are called facets.
Advantages:
• It makes the programming easier by grouping the related data.
• Frame representation is easy to understand and visualize.
• It is very easy to add slots for new attributes and relations.
• Also, it is easy to include default data and search for missing values.
Disadvantages:
• In frame system inference, the mechanism cannot be easily processed.
• The inference mechanism cannot be smoothly proceeded by frame representation.
• It has a very generalized approach
• Facets: The various aspects of a slot is known as Facets. Facets are
features of frames which enable us to put constraints on the frames.
Example: IF-NEEDED facts are called when data of any particular slot
is needed. A frame may consist of any number of slots, and a slot may
include any number of facets and facets may have any number of
values. A frame is also known as slot-filter knowledge
representation in artificial intelligence.
• Frames are derived from semantic networks and later evolved into
our modern-day classes and objects. A single frame is not much
useful. Frames system consist of a collection of frames which are
connected. In the frame, knowledge about an object or event can be
stored together in the knowledge base. The frame is a type of
technology which is widely used in various applications including
Natural language processing and machine visions.
 FRAMES
• FRAMES :- means of representing common sense knowledge.
Knowledge is organized into small packets called “Frames”. All frames
of a given situation constitute the system.
•  A frame can be defined as a structure that has slots for various objects
& a collection of frames consist of expectation for a given situation.
• Frame are used to represent two types of knowledge viz.
declarative/factual and procedural, declarative & procedural Frames: -
• A frame that merely contains description about objects is call a
declarative type/factual situational frame.
Name : Computer Centre Name of the frame

A/c Stationary Slots in the frame

cupboard

Computer Dumb
terminals

Printer
Production Rules
• In production rules, agent checks for the condition and if the condition exists then production rule fires
and corresponding action is carried out. The condition part of the rule determines which rule may be
applied to a problem. Whereas, the action part carries out the associated problem-solving steps. This
complete process is called a recognize-act cycle.
The production rules system consists of three main parts:
• The set of production rules
• Working Memory
• The recognize-act-cycle
Advantages:
• The production rules are expressed in natural language.
• The production rules are highly modular and can be easily removed or modified.
Disadvantages:
• It does not exhibit any learning capabilities and does not store the result of the problem for future uses.
• During the execution of the program, many rules may be active. Thus, rule-based production systems
are inefficient.
• So, these were the important techniques for Knowledge Representation in AI
Example:
• IF (at bus stop AND bus arrives) THEN action (get into the bus)
• IF (on the bus AND paid AND empty seat) THEN action (sit down).
• IF (on bus AND unpaid) THEN action (pay charges).
• IF (bus arrives at destination) THEN action (get down from the bus).
Representation Requirements
• A good knowledge representation system must have properties such
as:
• Representational Accuracy: It should represent all kinds of required
knowledge.
• Inferential Adequacy: It should be able to manipulate the
representational structures to produce new knowledge corresponding
to the existing structure.
• Inferential Efficiency: The ability to direct the inferential knowledge
mechanism into the most productive directions by storing appropriate
guides.
• Acquisitional efficiency: The ability to acquire new knowledge easily
using automatic methods.
• Approaches to Knowledge Representation in AI
• There are different approaches to knowledge representation such as:
• 1. Simple Relational Knowledge
• It is the simplest way of storing facts which uses the relational
method. Here, all the facts about a set of the object are set out
systematically in columns. Also, this approach of knowledge
representation is famous in database systems where the relationship
between different entities is represented. Thus, there is little
opportunity for inference.
• 2. Inheritable Knowledge
• In the inheritable knowledge approach, all data must be stored into a
hierarchy of classes and should be arranged in a generalized form or a
hierarchal manner.
• Also, this approach contains inheritable knowledge which shows a
relation between instance and class, and it is called instance relation.
In this approach, objects and values are represented in Boxed nodes.
3. Inferential Knowledge
• The inferential knowledge approach represents knowledge in the
form of formal logic. Thus, it can be used to derive more facts. Also, it
guarantees correctness.
Example:
• Statement 1: John is a cricketer.
• Statement 2: All cricketers are athletes.
Then it can be represented as;
• Cricketer(John)
∀x = Cricketer (x) ———-> Athelete (x)s
• These were some of the approaches to knowledge
representation in AI along with examples.
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION ISSUES
Issues in knowledge representation
• The main objective of knowledge representation is to draw the
conclusions from the knowledge, but there are many issues
associated with the use of knowledge representation techniques.
1. Important attributes
There are two attributes shown in the diagram, instance and isa. Since these attributes support property of inheritance, they are of
prime importance.

2. Relationships among attributes

Basically, the attributes used to describe objects are nothing but the entities. However, the attributes of an object do not depend on the
encoded specific knowledge.
3. Choosing the granularity of representation
While deciding the granularity of representation, it is necessary to know the following:

i. What are the primitives and at what level should the knowledge be represented?

ii. What should be the number (small or large) of low-level primitives or high-level facts?

High-level facts may be insufficient to draw the conclusion while Low-level primitives may require a lot of storage.
For example: Suppose that we are interested in following facts:
John spotted Alex.

Now, this could be represented as "Spotted (agent(John), object (Alex))"

Such a representation can make it easy to answer questions such as: Who spotted Alex?

Suppose we want to know : "Did John see Sue?"

Given only one fact, user cannot discover that answer.

Hence, the user can add other facts, such as "Spotted (x, y) → saw (x, y)"
4. Representing sets of objects.
There are some properties of objects which satisfy the condition of a set together but not as individual;

Example: Consider the assertion made in the sentences:

"There are more sheep than people in Australia", and "English speakers can be found all over the world."
These facts can be described by including an assertion to the sets representing people, sheep, and English.

5. Finding the right structure as needed

To describe a particular situation, it is always important to find the access of right structure. This can be done by
selecting an initial structure and then revising the choice.

While selecting and reversing the right structure, it is necessary to solve following problem statements. They
include the process on how to:

Select an initial appropriate structure.

• Fill the necessary details from the current situations.
• Determine a better structure if the initially selected structure is not appropriate to fulfill other conditions.
• Find the solution if none of the available structures is appropriate.
• Create and remember a new structure for the given condition.
• There is no specific way to solve these problems, but some of the  effective knowledge representation
techniques have the potential to solve them.