Incompleteness in knowledge bases

Abstract

The first topic for discussion at the High Level Abstraction Workshop was What should be modelled? that is, what aspects of the world (slice of reality / enterprise) must be dealt with in a high level conceptual model. I would like to address this question from the point of view of incomplete knowledge bases. Although my remarks pertain mainly to AI applications, I suspect that any application using an information system of some sort will eventually have to face similar issues. The knowledge bases required in many applications can be characterized by a lack of complete information about the world of interest.