Re: A plea against central planning (was: Why not import everything?)

> "R.V.Guha" wrote:
> 
> Jeff Heflin wrote:
> 
> > First of all, I think the problem with the Cyc ontology is it is too
> > big. Semantic Web ontologies should be small and modularized.
> >
> > Second, in order to avoid making every user learn logic and study
> > every
> > ontology, I envision "ontology certification authorities." These
> > organizations will consist of logicians who make sure that an
> > ontology
> > is correct, summarize it and give it a seal of approval. Users can
> > then
> > freely pick and choose these ontologies with some confidence that
> > they
> > will behave as they expect. Note, users are still free to create
> > their
> > own ontologies and to use uncertified ontologies. Anyway, I think a
> > variation of this solution is viable.
> >
> >
> Jeff,
> 
>  If we can't make use of large ontologies like Cyc or TAP, which could
> provide wonderful launchpads for bootstrapping the whole enterprise,
> we should seriously re-examine our approach. I do understand that some
> AI communities have reservations about aspects of  KBs such as Cyc,
> but they do represent a significant commitment of resources which
> should be usable by the SW.

I think reusing exisiting ontologies is a good thing. I'd just like to
see the Semantic Web versions of Cyc released in much smaller
components, so someone can use part of it without having to buy into the
whole thing. BTW, I like the idea of TAP, but the same comment applies.
Why do I need the baby products stuff if all I want is the sports stuff?
Each domain should be a serparte ontology that I can pick and choose
from.

>  I would also like to plead against the use of  concepts such as
> "ontology certification authorities" staffed  by logicians. If the
> infrastructure we build is so hard to understand that we need
> professional logicians to approve it before it is safe for consumption
> by others, it will be sad. I also don't see a bunch of logicians
> understanding medicine or law or ... well enough to provide a seal of
> approval of an ontology of that topic. I can just imagine the state of
> Kansas approving an ontology which set the value of pi to be 3 ;-).
> But seriously, an approach that relies on this kind of certification
> process as part of the infrastructure is antithetical to the net ...
> it reminds me too much of central planning.

I disagree. Trust on the Web is commonly handled by digital certificate
authorities such as Verisign. I'm proposing an ontology equivalent to
such authorities. You can take them with a grain of salt, but they'll
give many people a nice warm fuzzy. Just to be clear, I did not suggest
that every ontology would have to be approved by an authority (that
would certainly go against the nature of the Web). I only meant that
ontologies designed for mass public use could benefit from being
certified, because that would give users a comfort level without having
to double-check that buying into the ontology didn't mean they have to
give away their first-born.

One other thing, I agree about the danger in staffing such organizations
entirely with logicians, they would have to include domain experts as
well.

Jeff

Received on Thursday, 23 May 2002 14:57:23 UTC