Artificial Intelligence

Q.1 Define knowledge. Discuss various types of knowledge. What is the importance of knowledge?

Ans. Knowledge can be defined as the body of facts and principles accumulated by human-kind or the act, fact or state of knowing. But knowledge is much more than this. It is having familiarity with language, concepts, procedures, rules, ideas, abstractions, places, customs, facts and associations, coupled with an ability to use these notions effectively in modeling different aspects of world. Without this ability, facts and concepts are meaningless or worthless. The meaning of knowledge is closely related to the meaning of intelligence. Intelligence requires the possession of and access to knowledge Types of Knowledge - Knowledge may be declarative or procedural.

(i) Procedural knowledge is compiled knowledge related to the performance of some task. For example, the steps used to solve an algebraic equation are expressed as procedural knowledge.

(ii) Declarative knowledge on the other hand, is passive knowledge expressed as statements of facts about the world. Personnel data in a database is typical of declarative knowledge.

There is one more special types of knowledge frequently used by humans to solve complex problems, is the heuristic knowledge. Heuristics are the knowledge used to make good judgments or strategies, tricks or rules of thumb used to simplify the solution of problems. For example, in locating a fault in a TV set, an experienced technician will not start by making numerous voltage checks when it is clear that the sound is present but the picture is not but instead will immediately reason that the high voltage flyback transformer or related component is the culprit and then it leads to a quick solution.

Importance of Knowledge : AI has given new meaning and importance to knowledge. Now, for the first time, it is possible to package specialized knowledge and sell it will a system that can use it to reason and draw conclusions. Imagine being able to purchase an untiring, reliable advisor that gives high level professional advice in specialized areas, such as manufacturing techniques, sound financial strategies, way's to improve one's health, top marketing sectors and strategies, optimal farming plans and many other important matters. Al has made it possible to design the practical realization of this knowledge based system.
The one who will create and market such systems will have more than just an economic advantage over the rest of the world.