Knowledge Maintenance and the Frame Problem

Brewster, Mr. Christopher (2003) Knowledge Maintenance and the Frame Problem. In Proceedings 6th Annual CLUK Research Colloquium, Edinburgh.

Full text available as:

PDF - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

Knowledge maintenance is a major challenge for both knowledge management and the Semantic Web. Operating over the Semantic Web, there will be a network of collaborating agents, each with their own ontologies or knowledge bases. Change in the knowledge state of one agent may need to be propagated across a number of agents and their associated ontologies. The challenge is to decide how to propagate a change of knowl-edge state. The effects of a change in knowledge state cannot be known in advance, and so an agent cannot know who should be informed unless it adopts a simple ‘tell everyone – every-thing’ strategy. This situation is highly reminis-cent of the classic Frame Problem in AI. We argue that for agent-based technologies to suc-ceed, far greater attention must be given to creat-ing an appropriate model for knowledge update. In a closed system, simple strategies are possible (e.g. ‘sleeping dog’ or ‘cheap test’ or even com-plete checking). However, in an open system where cause and effect are unpredictable, a co-herent cost-benefit based model of agent interac-tion is essential. Otherwise, the effectiveness of every act of knowledge update/maintenance is brought into question.

Contact the site administrator at: hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk