Brian R. Gaines

AAAI Conference 1994 Conference Paper

Using Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Tools to Support Scientific Communities

• Brian R. Gaines

Widespread access to the Internet has led to the formation of geographically dispersed scientific communities collaborating through the network. The tools supporting such collaboration currently are based primarily on electronic mail through mailing list servers, and access to archives of research reports through ftp, gopher and world wide web. However, electronic communication can support the knowledge processes of scientific communities more directly through overtly represented knowledge structures. This paper describes some experiments in the use of knowledge acquisition (ISA) and representation (KR) tools to define and analyze major policy and technical issues in an international research community responsible for one of the test cases in the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) research program. It is concluded that distributed knowledge support systems in routine use by world-class scientific communities collaborating through the Internet will provide a major impetus to artificial intelligence research.

IJCAI Conference 1993 Conference Paper

A Class Library Implementation of a Principled Open Architecture Knowledge Representation Server with Plug-in Data Types

• Brian R. Gaines

A knowledge representation server is described which provides a fast, memory-efficient and principled system component. Modeling the server through intensional algebraic semantics leads naturally to an openarchitecture class library into which new data types may be plugged in as required without change to the basic deductive engine. It is shown that the operation of an existing knowledge representation system, CLASSIC, may be implemented through one data type supporting sets with upper and lower set and cardinality bounds. The architecture developed is cleanly layered by complexity of inference so that fast propagation of constraints is separated from potentially slow modelchecking search. Client programs may obtain estimates of the complexity of a request, and may control the resources allocated to its complete solution.

KER Journal 1993 Journal Article

Knowledge acquisition tools based on personal construct psychology

• Brian R. Gaines
• Mildred L. G. Shaw

Abstract Knowledge acquisition research supports the generation of knowledge-based systems through the development of principles, techniques, methodologies and tools. What differentiates knowledge-based system development from conventional system development is the emphasis on in-depth understanding and formalization of the relations between the conceptual structures underlying expert performance and the computational structures capable of emulating that performance. Personal construct psychology is a theory of individual and group psychological and social processes that has been used extensively in knowledge acquisition research to model the cognitive processes of human experts. The psychology takes a constructivist position appropriate to the modelling of human knowledge processes, but develops this through the characterization of human conceptual structures in axiomatic terms that translate directly to computational form. In particular, there is a close correspondence between the intensional logics of knowledge, belief and action developed in personal construct psychology, and the intensional logics for formal knowledge representation developed in artificial intelligence research as term subsumption, or KL-ONE-like, systems. This paper gives an overview of personal construct psychology and its expression as an intensional logic describing the cognitive processes of anticipatory agents, and uses this to survey knowledge acquisition tools deriving from personal construct psychology.

IJCAI Conference 1991 Conference Paper

An Interactive Visual Language for Term Subsumption Languages

• Brian R. Gaines

A visual language is defined equivalent in expressive power to term subsumption languages expressed in textual form. To each knowledge representation primitive there corresponds a visual form expressing it concisely and completely. The visual language and textual languages are intertranslatable. Expressions in the language are graphs of labeled nodes and directed or undirected arcs. The nodes are labeled textually or iconically and their types are denoted by six different outlines. Computer-readable expressions in the language may be created through a structure editor that ensures that syntactic constraints are obeyed. The editor exports knowledge structures to a knowledge representation server computing subsumption and recognition, and maintaining a hybrid knowledge base of concept definitions and individual assertions. The server can respond to queries graphically displaying the results in the visual language in editable form. Knowledge structures can be entered directly in the editor or imported from knowledge acquisition tools such as those supporting repertory grid elicitation and empirical induction. Knowledge structures can be -exported to a range of knowledge-based systems.

AAAI Conference 1991 Conference Paper

Integrating Rules in Term Subsumption Knowledge Representation Servers

• Brian R. Gaines

IJCAI Conference 1989 Conference Paper

Comparing the Conceptual Systems of Experts

• Brian R. Gaines
• Mildred L. G. Shaw