[unrev-II] Knowledge Representation

From: Eric Armstrong (eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2000 - 18:33:25 PDT

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    Jack Park wrote:
    >
    > So, why not let's enumerate the problems of knowledge representation
    > we want to solve, then start from there.
    >
    Thinking more about this.

    The goal at this stage of computational development is to *augment*
    human reasoning, not replace it. So, while I applaud efforts aimed at
    teaching machines to understand "tree" and "apple", there are simply too
    many nouns in the world to make that approach useful any time soon. Even
    if we *do* reach the point where machines can understanding everything,
    I'm not sure I care. If the machine doesn't make *me* smarter, then I am
    fundamentally dependent on it in ways I don't like it.

    So fundamentally, I want the machinery to act as a tool, as an enabler
    that helps make me smarter -- one that relieves me of much of the
    repetitive labor. Along those lines, it doesn't much matter to me if the
    machines understand the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
    themselves. The most I will ever want to ask of it is that it
    understands when a word is a noun, and when it is an adjective. At that
    point I may be able to get
    it to help identify redundancies and contradictions.

    Even before we get to grammatical reasoning, I think there is a layer of
    machine-assisted reasoning that we can implement in the near term.

    When I think about what I do in the design process, it really looks very
    much like a logical system. There are alternatives (or), aggregations
    (and), implications (therefore), and negations (not). There may also be
    syllogistic inferences (a->b & b->c & a => c), as well as contradictions
    (a & ~a).

    There is also a lot of reasoning by analogy, as one of the speakers in
    Saturday's seminar mentioned. I'm not sure if the system can help us
    with that, but it would be nice if it could. To reason by analogy now,
    for a moment, I recall that most people hated outlines in school. The
    reason? Writing them on paper made them difficult to change. That meant
    you had to get it all organized in your head first, and most people
    don't do that.
    On the other hand, when people try outlines on a computer, they quickly
    come to realize that they can easily rearrange things to *build* the
    organization as they go along. The difference is like night and day. The
    outline becomes a tool that helps them get organized, instead of an
    additional impediment.

    I am thinking that a tool that assists us with our own reasoning can
    have a similar kind of benefit. Although we are not much used to dealing
    with assertions, negations, and implications in our usual discourse,
    perhaps a tool that really helped us in that area would change our way
    of reasoning.

    In the design process, for example, we start with a problem we are
    trying to solve -- or possibly several. We go from there to a collection
    (and) of features -- and we often revise our problem statement in the
    process. Each feature suggests a set (or) of alternative
    implementations. Individual implementations and combinations of them
    imply additional implementation details -- which may in turn suggest new
    features that are easily derived from the implementation, which may once
    again cause a reformulation or refinement of the problem statement.

    The multiple feedback loops and the need to track implications from one
    document to the next are tasks we leave up to individual designers.
    Their numbers are limited, due to the difficulty of integrating large
    volumes of information and maintaining all the "mental links" necessary
    to do the job properly. But what if there were a tool that assisted us
    in that process? Might it be possible for average programmer-jock to
    perform like super-designer?

    Now, for the design process, the "documents" consist of problem
    statements, functional requirements, functional specs, data structures,
    design specs, help systems, user guides, and other documentation. When
    engaged in the reasoning process, though, the mind does not stay rigidly
    fixed within a single document space -- it happily jumps to the nearest
    logical node, regardless of the space it is in. So, while thinking about
    part of the functional spec, the mind may leap to related ideas in the
    design space, the data structure space, or the requirements space.

    That observation imposes several requirements on the system:
      1) It must be possible to capture associated ideas easily and
         naturally, without having to "change context" to another
         document to do so.

      2) It must be possible to tag the ideas as "design" "functional
         spec", or whatever -- and it must be possible to do so after
         the fact, rather than requiring the author to accurately
         predict the correct category in advance.

      3) It must be possible to collect all ideas (nodes) of a single
         type to create a "document". Collect all of the data structure
         notes, for example, produces at least the initial version of
         the data structure document.

      4) Since design decisions will typically allow for multiple
         possibilities, it must be possible to limit the collection
         of nodes to those that correspond to some other document.
         For example, it must be possible to collect the data structure
         notes corresponding to version 12 of Jim's proposed functional
         spec, which selects some set of the proposed features for
         implementation.

    In summary, I'm seeing mental processes that can be abstracted, and
    tools that can be constructed to improve them, without any sense of
    "knowledge processing" on the part of the machine. If the machine is
    simply a tool for manipulating symbols, and the humans are responsible
    for interpreting the meaning, that is fine with me. (In fact, I find
    that preferable.)

    Part of the mental process consists of asking questions, adducing
    alternatives, evaluating the alternatives, and choosing an answer. Those
    are the kinds of functions that IBIS provides.

    But I'm also seeing a need for making strategic proposals that combine a
    number of alternatives. For example, the question "how do we solve the
    energy problem" has multiple "alternatives" like "raise prices, use
    public transportation, improve insulation, make everybody walk, build
    smaller cars, and catch the wind. Clearly, no one alternative is
    sufficient. A policy proposal will select several of them, and show how
    they work together to address the problem at many levels.

    I'm also seeing the need to categorize information, as mentioned above.
    But most importantly, we need to improve our conflict, collision, and
    contradiction detection. For example, I believe we are *still*
    subsidizing the tobacco industry, while at the same time suing them and
    spending millions of dollars on non-smoking campaigns. Is that nuts, or
    what?

    Similarly, we may set up functional requirements for a system such
    that:
       a) It is small.
       b) It is fast.
       c) It does everything.

    But a+b=>~c, and a+c=>~b, while b+c=>~a. So this design is nuts! We need
    systems that will help us figure these things out sooner in the design
    process. [Note: Here I've indulged my personal taste for "+" as "and".
    Unfortunately, that means "^" or "," has to mean "or", and there isn't a
    lot of wide spread agreement about that. I know that "*" is usually
    "and" and "+" is usually "or", but I detest that convention. Sorry.)

    At some point, too, the system probably has to allow for quantitative
    thinking, as well as the qualitative thinking outlined so far. So it
    should be possible to say "smaller than x", "faster than y", "with
    features a, b, c, d, and e." "Contradictions" then come in shades of
    gray, with options of relaxing requirements or eliminating features.

    Similarly, policy proposals often revolve around quantitative issues.
    One proposal may be "n billion for anti-smoking ads, m billion for
    cancer
    research, x billion for hospitalization, and a nickel nintey-eight for
    tobacco subsidies". Another proposal might be: "Improve the omega-3
    fatty acids in our national diet, since rats who get them high doses
    can't be given cancer by any means we've been able to find, regardless
    of the amounts of carcinogens we administer". (Sorry. Wrong soapbox.)

    The final comment I'll make is that reduction is an important component
    of the system. It has to be. When the same question comes into a email
    list for the 400th time, it must be joined at the hip to other variants
    of the
    question, all of which are answered by a set of responses, in the order
    in which they were found to be most helpful by readers.

    'nuff said, for now.

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