Knowledge-Based

Agents
Chapter 7.1-7.3

Some material adopted from notes

by Andreas Geyer-Schulz
and Chuck Dyer
 Big Idea
• Drawing reasonable conclusions from a set of data
(observations, beliefs, etc) seems key to intelligence
• Logic is a powerful and well developed approach to
this and highly regarded by people
• Logic is also a strong formal system that we can
programs computers to use
• Maybe we can reduce any AI problem to figuring
out how to represent it in logic and apply standard
proof techniques to generate solutions
 Inference in People
• People can do logical inference, but are not
very good at it.
• Reasoning with negation and disjunction
seems to be particularly difficult.
• But, people seem to employ many kinds of
reasoning strategies, most of which are
neither complete nor sound.

3
 Wason Selection Task
• I have a pack of cards each of which has a letter
written on one side and a number written on the
other side and I claim the following rule is true:
If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an
even number on the other side.
• Look at these cards and say which card or cards to
turn over in order to decide whether the rule is true
or false?

E 4 T 7

4
 Wason Selection Task
• Wason (1966) showed that people are not very
good at this task.
Wason, P. (1966). Reasoning. In New Horizons in Psychology.
Penguin, Hammondsworth, UK.
• To disprove P=>Q, find a situation in which P^~Q
• To disprove vowel => even, find a card with a
vowel and an odd number
• Thus, turn over the cards showing vowels and turn
over cards showing odd numbers

5
 Wason Selection Task
• This version seems easier for people to do, as was shown by
Griggs & Cox, 1982
• Your are the bouncer in a bar. Which of these people do
you card given the rule:
You must be 21 or older to drink beer.

beer coke 22 20

• It may be simpler because it’s more familiar or because

people have special strategies to reason about certain
situations, such as “cheating” in a social situation.

6
 Logic as a Methodology
Even if people do not use formal logical reasoning
for solving a problem, logic might be a good
approach for AI for a number of reasons
– Airplanes don’t need to flap their wings
– Logic may be a good implementation strategy
– Developing a solution in a formal system like
logic can offer other benefits, e.g., letting us
prove properties of the approach
•See neats vs. scruffies
 A knowledge-based agent
• A knowledge-based agent includes a knowledge base and an
inference system.
• A knowledge base is a set of representations of facts of the
world.
• Each individual representation is called a sentence.
• The sentences are expressed in a knowledge representation
language.
• The agent operates as follows:
1. It TELLs the knowledge base what it perceives.
2. It ASKs the knowledge base what action it should perform.
3. It performs the chosen action.
Architecture of a KB agent
• Knowledge Level
– The most abstract level: describe agent by saying
what it knows
– Ex: A taxi agent might know that the Golden Gate Bridge
connects San Francisco with the Marin County
• Logical Level
– The level at which the knowledge is encoded into sentences
– Ex: links(GoldenGateBridge, SanFrancisco, MarinCounty)
• Implementation Level
– The physical representation of the sentences in the logical level
– Ex: ‘(links goldengatebridge sanfrancisco
marincounty)
The Wumpus World environment
• The Wumpus computer game
• The agent explores a cave consisting of rooms
connected by passageways
• Lurking somewhere in the cave is the Wumpus, a
beast that eats any agent that enters its room
• Some rooms contain bottomless pits that trap any
agent that wanders into the room
• The Wumpus can fall into a pit too, so avoids them
• Occasionally, there is a heap of gold in a room.
• The goal is to collect the gold and exit the world
without being eaten
Wumpus History
• See Hunt_the_Wumpus for
details
• Early (c. 1972) text-based game
written in BASIC written by Gregory Yob, a
student at UMASS, Dartmouth
• Defined a genre of games including adventure,
zork, and nethack
• Eventually commercialized (c. 1980) for early
personal computers
• The Hunt the Wumpus basic code is available in a
1976 article in Creative Computing by Yob!
 AIMA’s Wumpus World

•The agent always

starts in the field
[1,1]
•Agent’s task is to
find the gold, return
to the field [1,1] and
climb out of the cave
 Agent in a Wumpus world: Percepts
• The agent perceives
– a stench in the square containing the Wumpus and in the
adjacent squares (not diagonally)
– a breeze in the squares adjacent to a pit
– a glitter in the square where the gold is
– a bump, if it walks into a wall
– a woeful scream everywhere in the cave, if the Wumpus
is killed
• The percepts are given as a five-symbol list. If there is a
stench and a breeze, but no glitter, no bump, and no scream,
the percept is
[Stench, Breeze, None, None, None]
• The agent cannot perceive its own location
 Wumpus World Actions
• go forward
• turn right 90 degrees
• turn left 90 degrees
• grab: Pick up an object that’s in the same square as the agent
• shoot: Fire an arrow in a straight line in the direction the agent
is facing. It continues until it hits and kills the Wumpus or hits
the outer wall. The agent has only one arrow, so only the first
shoot action has any effect
• climb is used to leave the cave and is only effective in the start
square
• die: This action automatically and irretrievably happens if the
agent enters a square with a pit or a live Wumpus
 Wumpus World Goal
The agent’s goal is to find the gold and bring
it back to the start square as quickly as
possible, without getting killed
– 1,000 points reward for climbing out of the
cave with the gold
– 1 point deducted for every action taken
– 10,000 points penalty for getting killed
 Wumpus world characterization
• Fully Observable No – only local perception
• Deterministic Yes – outcomes exactly specified
• Episodic No – sequential at the level of actions
• Static Yes – Wumpus and Pits do not move
• Discrete Yes
• Single-agent? Yes – Wumpus is essentially a
natural feature
 AIMA’s Wumpus World

•The agent always

starts in the field
[1,1]
•Agent’s task is to
find the gold, return
to the field [1,1] and
climb out of the cave
The Hunter’s first step

¬W

¬W
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
S stench
W wumpus
Exploring a wumpus world

A agent
P?
B breeze
G glitter
OK safe cell
P pit
P?
S stench
W wumpus
 Wumpuses online

• AIMA code
– Python
– Lisp
• http://scv.bu.edu/cgi-bin/wcl – Web-based
version you can play
• http://codenautics.com/wumpus/ - Mac
version
 Logic in general
• Logics are formal languages for representing
information such that conclusions can be drawn
• Syntax defines the sentences in the language
• Semantics define the "meaning" of sentences
– i.e., define truth of a sentence in a world
• E.g., the language of arithmetic
– x+2 ≥ y is a sentence; x2+y > {} is not a sentence
– x+2 ≥ y is true iff the number x+2 is no less than
the number y
– x+2 ≥ y is true in a world where x = 7, y = 1
– x+2 ≥ y is false in a world where x = 0, y = 6
 Entailment
• Entailment means that one thing follows from
another:
KB ╞ α

• Knowledge base KB entails sentence α if and only

if α is true in all worlds where KB is true
– E.g., the KB containing “UMBC won” and “JHU won”
entails “Either UMBC won or JHU won”
– E.g., x+y = 4 entails 4 = x+y
–
– Entailment is a relationship between sentences (i.e.,
syntax) that is based on semantics
 Models
• Logicians typically think in terms of models, which
are formally structured worlds with respect to which
truth can be evaluated

• We say m is a model of a sentence α if α is true in m

• M(α) is the set of all models of α

• Then KB ╞ α iff M(KB)  M(α)

– KB = UMBC won and JHU won
– α = UMBC won
– Then KB ╞ α
 Entailment in the wumpus world
• Situation after detecting
nothing in [1,1], moving
right, breeze in [2,1]
• Consider possible models for
KB assuming only pits and
restricting cells to
{(1,3)(2,1)(2,2)}
• 3 Boolean choices  8
possible models
Wumpus models
 Wumpus models

KB = wumpus-world rules + observations

 Wumpus models

• KB = wumpus-world rules + observations

• α1 = “[1,2] is safe”
• Since all models include α1
• KB ╞ α1, proved by model checking
 Wumpus models

• KB = wumpus-world rules + observations

 Wumpus models

• KB = wumpus-world rules + observations

• α2 = "[2,2] is safe“
• Since there are some models that don’t include α2
• KB ╞ α2
 Inference, Soundness, Completeness
• KB ├i α = sentence α can be derived from KB by
procedure i
• Soundness: i is sound if whenever KB ├i α, it is
also true that KB╞ α
• Completeness: i is complete if whenever KB╞ α,
it is also true that KB ├i α
• Preview: we will define a logic (first-order logic)
which is expressive enough to say almost anything
of interest, and for which there exists a sound and
complete inference procedure. That is, the
procedure will answer any question whose answer
follows from what is known by the KB.
 Representation, reasoning, and logic
• The object of knowledge representation is to express
knowledge in a computer-tractable form, so that
agents can perform well
• A knowledge representation language is defined by:
– its syntax, which defines all possible sequences of
symbols that constitute sentences of the language.
• Ex: Sentences in a book, bit patterns in computer
memory
– its semantics, which determines the facts in the
world to which the sentences refer.
• Each sentence makes a claim about the world.
• An agent is said to believe a sentence about the world.
The connection between sentences and facts

Semantics maps sentences in logic to facts in the world.

The property of one fact following from another is mirrored
by the property of one sentence being entailed by another.
 Soundness and completeness

• A sound inference method derives only

entailed sentences
• Analogous to the property of completeness
in search, a complete inference method can
derive any sentence that is entailed
 Logic as a KR language

Multi-valued Modal Temporal Non-monotonic

Logic Logic

Higher Order
Probabilistic
Logic First Order

Fuzzy Propositional Logic

Logic
 Ontology and epistemology

• Ontology is the study of what there is—an inventory of what

exists. An ontological commitment is a commitment to an
existence claim.
• Epistemology is a major branch of philosophy that concerns
the forms, nature, and preconditions of knowledge.
No independent access to the world
• The reasoning agent often gets its knowledge about
the facts of the world as a sequence of logical
sentences and must draw conclusions only from them
without independent access to the world.
• Thus, it is very important that the agent’s reasoning
is sound!
 Summary
• Intelligent agents need knowledge about the world for making
good decisions.
• The knowledge of an agent is stored in a knowledge base
(KB) in the form of sentences in a knowledge representation
(KR) language.
• A knowledge-based agent needs a KB and an inference
mechanism. It operates by storing sentences in its knowledge
base, inferring new sentences with the inference mechanism,
and using them to deduce which actions to take.
• A representation language is defined by its syntax and
semantics, which specify the structure of sentences and how
they relate to the facts of the world.
• The interpretation of a sentence is the fact to which it refers.
If the fact is part of the actual world, then the sentence is true.