Knowledge Representation to Empower Expert Systems

Abstract

Knowledge representation is a field of artificial intelligence that has been actively pursued since the 1940s.1 The issues at stake are that given a specific domain, how do we represent knowledge in that domain, and how do we reason about that domain? This issue of knowledge representation is of paramount importance, since the knowledge representation scheme may foster or hinder reasoning. The representation scheme can enable reasoning to take place, or it may make the desired reasoning impossible. To some extent, the knowledge representation depends upon the underlying technology. For instance, in order to perform default reasoning with exceptions, one needs weak negation (aka negation as failure. In fact, most complex forms of reasoning will require weak negation. This is a facility that is an integral part of logic programs but is lacking from expert system shells. Many Prolog implementations provide negation as failure, however, they do not understand nor implement the proper semantics. The companion article to this article in this volume, “Logic Programming Languages for Expert Systems,” discusses logic programming and negation as failure.