Tutorial on artificial intelligence research

Abstract

First of all, a few things about the basic terms I will use. A knowledge representation scheme is a formalism for representing knowledge. The term knowledge representation will be used to refer to knowledge representation schemes, knowledge representation languages, and so on. The corresponding term in database modelling is data model or semantic data model. We're talking about natural ways of capturing some sort of reality using a specification language. The things produced when using a knowledge representation scheme are referred to as knowledge bases which correspond in database modelling and programming languages with conceptual schema and program specification respectively. What is a knowledge base? What is modelled by a knowledge base? I am happy to report that there is no one answer from people working in knowledge representation. Some people will argue that a knowledge base is a model of some world. Others will say that it is linguistic information about some world, and so on. Depending on the viewpoint, there are differences in knowledge representation schemes.