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Basics / July 15, 2021

Inferential Knowledge

Represent knowledge as formal logic: All dogs have tails  : dog(x)  hasatail(x) Advantages: A set of strict rules. Can be used to derive more facts. Truths of new statements can be verified. Guaranteed correctness. Many inference procedures available to in implement standard rules of logic. Popular in AI systems. e.g Automated theorem proving. Procedural Knowledge Basic idea: Knowledge encoded in some procedures […]

Represent knowledge as formal logic:

All dogs have tails tex2html_wrap_inline7154 : dog(x) tex2html_wrap_inline7156 hasatail(x) Advantages:

  • A set of strict rules.
    • Can be used to derive more facts.
    • Truths of new statements can be verified.
    • Guaranteed correctness.
  • Many inference procedures available to in implement standard rules of logic.
  • Popular in AI systems. e.g Automated theorem proving.

Procedural Knowledge

Basic idea:

  • Knowledge encoded in some procedures
    • small programs that know how to do specific things, how to proceed.
    • e.g a parser in a natural language understander has the knowledge that a noun phrase may contain articles, adjectives and nouns. It is represented by calls to routines that know how to process articles, adjectives and nouns.

Advantages:

  • Heuristic or domain specific knowledge can be represented.
  • Extended logical inferences, such as default reasoning facilitated.
  • Side effects of actions may be modelled. Some rules may become false in time. Keeping track of this in large systems may be tricky.

Disadvantages:

  • Completeness — not all cases may be represented.
  • Consistency — not all deductions may be correct.

e.g If we know that Fred is a bird we might deduce that Fred can fly. Later we might discover that Fred is an emu.

  • Modularity is sacrificed. Changes in knowledge base might have far-reaching effects.
  • Cumbersome control information.