Re: SUO: Re: Sowa's piece and thoughts on tractability
"John F. Sowa" a écrit :
> I would like to start with a comment by Jean-Luc with which I disagree
> very strongly. In fact, I believe that the attitude embodied in the
> following comment virtually guarantees that no progress in solving
> the problems of making different ontologies interoperable can
> even begin to be done:
>
> JLD> And, once more, DON'T AIM AT NATURAL LANGUAGES, for now and
> > probably quite a long while.
[snip]
> Jean-Luc's comment expresses the feeling, embodied in the term "AI
> complete", that natural language understanding is too difficult to
> consider.
Don't take me wrong!
I object to natural languages because MOST of the meaning they convey
is NOT of logical nature, just have a look Jon Awbrey's poem
and tell me how you would put that in FOL, HOL or whatever!!!
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg08320.html
Yet, everybody "understand" this, probably not
with the same meaning but still beyond FOL.
And, worse, within some discourse of apparently "logical" nature there
WILL be subtle connotations of this kind that will get totally unrecorded.
Missing them could make a total mess, see understatements etc...
> I agree that it is difficult, but I also believe that it
> is no harder than the problem of reconciling or relating multiple
> diverse ontologies to one another.
Really?
[snip]
> Furthermore, I would maintain that both ontology development and
> NL understanding are AI-complete problems. Unlike some people who
> immediately dismiss such problems as unworthy of serious consideration,
> I believe that we can make a great deal of progress on both ontology
> development and NL understanding if and only if we approach both of
> them together. Approaching either one by itself is a total waste of
> time. But both of them together are much easier to address and solve.
Don't agree.
> I would also like to cite the following point by Leo Obrst, with
> which I agree very strongly:
>
> LO> My point in all this: you need both (1) and (2).
> >
> > 1) the knowledge expressivity problem, i.e., encoding declarative
> > representations which are close to the human conceptual level
> >
> > 2) the efficient run-time execution of such expressive knowledge
> >
> > Now, will the rich expressivity you have (in a very expressive FOL/HOL
> > language) in (1) get lost or vitiated when you transform it based on
> > (2)? Yes, but again there are smart things you can do to minimize
> > this. But we need (1), i.e., we need expressivity and if you force
> > knowledge workers to encode their human conceptual level
> > representations to some "tractable" level of expressivity, ultimately
> > you doom the field of KR to a fatal irrelevance.
I agree very strongly too, PROVIDED, we stick to the "logical" meanings,
that is, most kinds of technical discourse.
When I reject natural languages that does not cover pidgin chatter that
you could have with an expert system, automated help desk and the like.
But the point I want to emphasise is that, contrary to popular trend,
we should AVOID to give the user the feeling that he is talking to an
"intelligent" system and quite the reverse, keep him aware at every
instant that he is not really "understood".
That will prevent very serious mistakes.
Best.
-- Jean-Luc Delatre
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"Circular logic will only make you dizzy." - Peri
"I know a computer when I talk to one!" - The Doctor
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http://perso.club-internet.fr/jld/ -- GSM: +33 6 11 24 06 29