What is knowledge representation?

Humans are best at understanding, reasoning, and interpreting

knowledge. Human knows things, which is knowledge and as per their
knowledge they perform various actions in the real world. But how
machines do all these things comes under knowledge representation
and reasoning. Hence we can describe Knowledge representation as
following:

o Knowledge representation and reasoning (KR, KRR) is the part of

Artificial intelligence which concerned with AI agents thinking
and how thinking contributes to intelligent behavior of agents.
o It is responsible for representing information about the real world
so that a computer can understand and can utilize this knowledge
to solve the complex real world problems such as diagnosis a
medical condition or communicating with humans in natural
language.
o It is also a way which describes how we can represent knowledge
in artificial intelligence. Knowledge representation is not just
storing data into some database, but it also enables an intelligent
machine to learn from that knowledge and experiences so that it
can behave intelligently like a human.

What to Represent:

Following are the kind of knowledge which needs to be represented in

AI systems:

o Object: All the facts about objects in our world domain. E.g.,
Guitars contains strings, trumpets are brass instruments.
o Events: Events are the actions which occur in our world.
o Performance: It describe behavior which involves knowledge
about how to do things.
o Meta-knowledge: It is knowledge about what we know.
 o Facts: Facts are the truths about the real world and what we
represent.
o Knowledge-Base: The central component of the knowledge-based
agents is the knowledge base. It is represented as KB. The
Knowledgebase is a group of the Sentences (Here, sentences are
used as a technical term and not identical with the English
language).

Knowledge: Knowledge is awareness or familiarity gained by

experiences of facts, data, and situations. Following are the types of
knowledge in artificial intelligence:

Types of knowledge

1. Declarative Knowledge:

o Declarative knowledge is to know about something.

o It includes concepts, facts, and objects.
 o It is also called descriptive knowledge and expressed in declarative
sentences.
o It is simpler than procedural language.

2. Procedural Knowledge

o It is also known as imperative knowledge.

o Procedural knowledge is a type of knowledge which is responsible
for knowing how to do something.
o It can be directly applied to any task.
o It includes rules, strategies, procedures, agendas, etc.
o Procedural knowledge depends on the task on which it can be
applied.

3. Meta-knowledge:

o Knowledge about the other types of knowledge is called Meta-

knowledge.

4. Heuristic knowledge:

o Heuristic knowledge is representing knowledge of some experts in

a filed or subject.
o Heuristic knowledge is rules of thumb based on previous
experiences, awareness of approaches, and which are good to work
but not guaranteed.

5. Structural knowledge:

o Structural knowledge is basic knowledge to problem-solving.

o It describes relationships between various concepts such as kind of,
part of, and grouping of something.
o It describes the relationship that exists between concepts or
objects.
AI knowledge cycle:

An Artificial intelligence system has the following components for

displaying intelligent behavior:

o Perception
o Learning
o Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
o Planning
o Execution

The above diagram is showing how an AI system can interact with the
real world and what components help it to show intelligence. AI system
has Perception component by which it retrieves information from its
environment. It can be visual, audio or another form of sensory input.
The learning component is responsible for learning from data captured
by Perception comportment. In the complete cycle, the main components
are knowledge representation and Reasoning. These two components are
involved in showing the intelligence in machine-like humans. These two
components are independent with each other but also coupled together.
The planning and execution depend on analysis of Knowledge
representation and reasoning.

Techniques of knowledge representation

There are mainly four ways of knowledge representation which are

given as follows:

1. Logical Representation
2. Semantic Network Representation
3. Frame Representation
4. Production Rules

1. Logical Representation

Logical representation is a language with some concrete rules which

deals with propositions and has no ambiguity in representation. Logical
representation means drawing a conclusion based on various conditions.
This representation lays down some important communication rules. It
consists of precisely defined syntax and semantics which supports the
sound inference. Each sentence can be translated into logics using syntax
and semantics.

Syntax:
o Syntaxes are the rules which decide how we can construct legal
sentences in the logic.
o It determines which symbol we can use in knowledge
representation.
o How to write those symbols.

Semantics:
o Semantics are the rules by which we can interpret the sentence in
the logic.
o Semantic also involves assigning a meaning to each sentence.

Logical representation can be categorised into mainly two logics:

a. Propositional Logics
b. Predicate logics

Advantages of logical representation:

1. Logical representation enables us to do logical reasoning.
2. Logical representation is the basis for the programming languages.

Disadvantages of logical Representation:

1. Logical representations have some restrictions and are challenging
to work with.
2. Logical representation technique may not be very natural, and
inference may not be so efficient.
2. Semantic Network Representation

Semantic networks are alternative of predicate logic for knowledge

representation. In Semantic networks, we can represent our knowledge
in the form of graphical networks. This network consists of nodes
representing objects and arcs which describe the relationship between
those objects. Semantic networks can categorize the object in different
forms and can also link those objects. Semantic networks are easy to
understand and can be easily extended.

This representation consist of mainly two types of relations:

a. IS-A relation (Inheritance)

b. Kind-of-relation

Example: Following are some statements which we need to represent in

the form of nodes and arcs.

Statements:
a. Jerry is a cat.
b. Jerry is a mammal
c. Jerry is owned by Priya.
d. Jerry is brown colored.
e. All Mammals are animal.
Drawbacks in Semantic representation:
1. Semantic networks take more computational time at runtime as we
need to traverse the complete network tree to answer some
questions. It might be possible in the worst case scenario that after
traversing the entire tree, we find that the solution does not exist in
this network.
2. Semantic networks try to model human-like memory (Which has
1015 neurons and links) to store the information, but in practice, it
is not possible to build such a vast semantic network.
3. These types of representations are inadequate as they do not have
any equivalent quantifier, e.g., for all, for some, none, etc.
4. Semantic networks do not have any standard definition for the link
names.
5. These networks are not intelligent and depend on the creator of the
system.
Advantages of Semantic network:
1. Semantic networks are a natural representation of knowledge.
2. Semantic networks convey meaning in a transparent manner.
3. These networks are simple and easily understandable.

3. Frame Representation

A frame is a record like structure which consists of a collection of

attributes and its values to describe an entity in the world. Frames are the
AI data structure which divides knowledge into substructures by
representing stereotypes situations. It consists of a collection of slots and
slot values. These slots may be of any type and sizes. Slots have names
and values which are called facets.

Facets: The various aspects of a slot is known as Facets. Facets are

features of frames which enable us to put constraints on the frames.
Example: IF-NEEDED facts are called when data of any particular slot
is needed. A frame may consist of any number of slots, and a slot may
include any number of facets and facets may have any number of values.
A frame is also known as slot-filter knowledge representation in
artificial intelligence.

Frames are derived from semantic networks and later evolved into our
modern-day classes and objects. A single frame is not much useful.
Frames system consist of a collection of frames which are connected. In
the frame, knowledge about an object or event can be stored together in
the knowledge base. The frame is a type of technology which is widely
used in various applications including Natural language processing and
machine visions.
Example: 1

Let's take an example of a frame for a book

Slots Filters

Title Artificial Intelligence

Genre Computer Science
Author Peter Norvig
Edition Third Edition
Year 1996
Page 1152
Advantages of frame representation:
1. The frame knowledge representation makes the programming
easier by grouping the related data.
2. The frame representation is comparably flexible and used by many
applications in AI.
3. It is very easy to add slots for new attribute and relations.
4. It is easy to include default data and to search for missing values.
5. Frame representation is easy to understand and visualize.

Disadvantages of frame representation:

1. In frame system inference mechanism is not be easily processed.
2. Inference mechanism cannot be smoothly proceeded by frame
representation.
3. Frame representation has a much generalized approach.
4. Production Rules

Production rules system consist of (condition, action) pairs which

mean, "If condition then action". It has mainly three parts:

o The set of production rules

o Working Memory
o The recognize-act-cycle

In production rules agent checks for the condition and if the condition
exists then production rule fires and corresponding action is carried out.
The condition part of the rule determines which rule may be applied to a
problem. And the action part carries out the associated problem-solving
steps. This complete process is called a recognize-act cycle.

The working memory contains the description of the current state of

problems-solving and rule can write knowledge to the working memory.
This knowledge match and may fire other rules.

If there is a new situation (state) generates, then multiple production

rules will be fired together, this is called conflict set. In this situation, the
agent needs to select a rule from these sets, and it is called a conflict
resolution.

Example:
o IF (at bus stop AND bus arrives) THEN action (get into the
bus)
o IF (on the bus AND paid AND empty seat) THEN action (sit
down).
o IF (on bus AND unpaid) THEN action (pay charges).

o IF (bus arrives at destination) THEN action (get down from

the bus).
Advantages of Production rule:
1. The production rules are expressed in natural language.
2. The production rules are highly modular, so we can easily remove,
add or modify an individual rule.

Disadvantages of Production rule:

1. Production rule system does not exhibit any learning capabilities,
as it does not store the result of the problem for the future uses.
2. During the execution of the program, many rules may be active
hence rule-based production systems are inefficient.