Tutorial: The Building of a Knowledge Base Using C++ and an Introduction to the Power of Predicate Calculus

An article introducing Conceptual Dependency and predicate calculus operations.

Introduction

How old is your operating system? UHH, that old? I do not mean how long ago you bought it, I meant to ask about its mental age. Is your computer's operating system intelligence the equivalent of a one year old or the equivalent of a ten year old? Well, if you use the same operating system that I do, the answer to that question is most probably that it is equivalent to a foetus more than anything else, or an older being that is not human and has learned how to use that calculator we had left laying around, but can only operate that same calculator if we dictate to him exactly what to input in it. In this article, I will explain and provide the source code in order to bring your computer operating system to a mental age of about a 10 year-old (not that bad for 100K of code). That is, I will bring it to the point where it can answer easy questions following a statement of facts, and also become able to make simple inferences from multiple, initially unrelated facts that are linked together by separate statements.

Background

Typically, inventions are made to resemble us. For historical reasons out of our control, the computer was invented as an object that does not resemble us in any way. Let's face it, we are good at dealing with concepts, but are weak at dealing with syntax (words). On the other side, a computer is extremely good at dealing with syntax (words) - for example, ask a computer to find all occurrences of the word 'difficult' in a 2000 pages document - but is useless when having to deal with concepts. As a consequence of that, we have become more and more frustrated with computers that truly cannot support us in the way we are, but instead forces us to betray our conceptual nature in order to use them.

How could we make a computer smarter and finally have a tool that really completes us? The following is a basis to start building upon.

The first element that is used to get to our goal is the use and some understanding of Conceptual Dependency (CD). CD has been around since the 1970s and it basically states that everything can be reduced to a small set of primitives (conceptual atoms) and role-filler pairs (more on that later). There is plenty of documentation available online and in printed publication, but I will give it only a quick overview here (rely more on the online documentation than what I've inserted into this article). Click here for online information on Conceptual Dependency.

In an eggshell (not even a nutshell), CD states that the basic relationship between objects of knowledge can be reduced to a limited amount of primitives.

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Courtesy: Codeproject.com