Re: Trip Reports on Dagstuhl Seminar on Knowledge Graphs

Alex and Stefan

obviously, you do not owe anyone any explanation, and I appreciate the
chance
to exchange-

It is obviously a matter of views - from inside the party things look
always more cheerful than
from outside :-)

 The criticism  is probably aimed at weak leadership (..) and maybe to
academia in general, on the one hand it funds innovation, on the the other
hand it greatly limits it and sometimes even completely spoils it and puts
it to sleep for good.   Academia has been fooling itself for a long time
sometimes to the point of being ridiculous with notable exceptions

I once attended a lecture by Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner (Edinburgh.
Systems Biology )
and he started by saying "95 percent of research papers are rubbish and
should be binned"
Sounded a bit harsh. I dont know how he got his figures, but I have similar
thoughts when I browse research paper on any given topic
A lot of noise, little subtance,

The way academic consortia justify the public funding they spend can be
very creative
I am not saying its easy to get things right, or that you guys are not
trying

It is known that academic networks can be self serving. Being a researcher
myself and having done a lot of reading recently I found the report
disappointing,  - call it the only publicly accessible workshop outcome? -
 not only failing to touch upon the question it raises, but also brushing
aside many relevant questions  and then patting itself on the back - but so
has been much of sw research in the last twenty years - some great stuff
having happened notwithstanding.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is probably the name of the game,
and it will continue to be

Now I am ranting :-)
Look forward to read the great research that will follow
:-)

PDM



On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 1:00 PM Axel Polleres <axel@polleres.net> wrote:

> Last comment on that, I think I already mentioned and politely tried to
> explain all I had to say contentwise…
>
> > I am perplexed what may be the cause that level of triviality, other
> than some hidden agenda
> > While I am sure you all had a great party,
>
> […]
>
> > Thank you, and apologies for the lack of diplomacy in expressing my
> concerns
>
> +1, accusing the attendees and organisers of the seminar (which I think
> was very fruitful, a good start for shaping future research, and creating
> mutual understanding, which is what Dagstuhl seminars are all about) of
> merely “having a great party”, “triviality” and “hidden agenda” indeed
> shows a great lack of diplomacy.
>
>
> > Do you see what I mean, the scope of the workshop
> > based on the report, seemed limited, So many more questions beg to be
> asked.
>
> Exactly! This is what such seminars are all about: raising and pinpointing
> open questions… no one expects the community to find solutions in a week.
> You may want to read
>
>     https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/dagstuhl-seminars/
>
> As a suggestion, you may rather want to focus on making constructive
> suggestions to move forward, rather than misunderstanding the need for
> discussions about open questions, gaps and lack of mutual understanding as
> “superficiality”.
>
> Best regards,
> Axel
>
>
> On 29.08.2019, at 02:21, Paola Di Maio <paoladimaio10@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you all,
>
> and Valentina for finding the sentence in the report were limitations were
> addressed-
> seems a bit notional tho?
>
> Steffan S:  thanks for the questions. Do you see what I mean, the scope of
> the workshop
> based on the report, seemed limited, So many more questions beg to be
> asked.
>
> Josh, as far as I am aware most KGs  in use are embedded, and due to
> various reasons
> which were NOT even mentioned in the report, the reliability for the
> purpose of reasoning
> is uncertain. Yes, you are right
> *with unreliable or incomplete data, while an inevitable fact of life, is
> not necessarily a problem one should attempt to solve at the KG level.  *
> true- but that is not what my problem is here
>  see below for the summary my criticism
> *l;dr plenty of things appear to have been said at the seminar which are
> more actionable than much of the established theory around KR and SW.*
> I did not see much of that, maybe need to read it again
>
>  In this thread, I asked  about proceedings for this workshop, as it
> looked promising, but then forgot about it, as no pointers were provided to
> resources. During a recent search trying to answer certain questions the
> report came up, and I was surprised not to see even remotely the expected
> breadth of questions (ideally answers) relating to this important theme.
>
> Will -  there have been a few threads where people ask what is the fuss
> about KGs
> and are they just hype, well I concluded that its just a name for
> triples/ntuples, and yes they
> are a form of KR, trendy and useful but perhaps overinflated a bit.
> Without further qualification KG do not satisfy the full scale of
> requirements for  KRs, especially in large automated complex reasoners-
>
> So, Alex  Valentina and all, if I am allowed, the main criticism for me
> remains":
>
> 1. very limited publicly accessible proceedings for a publicly funded
> workshop (the report, which as you say is just a  short summary but no
> other more comprehensive resource is provided)
>
> 2.  there is no novel contribution, the account of what KG are given in
> the report is limited (superficial)  Not much new came out of this
> workshop, how can this be?
> How can the best scholars in this field completely fail even just  to
> identify key open issues?
>
> 3.  The workshop, based on the report, fails to raise the important
> questions pertaining to the challenges relating to KGs and does not even
> get near to pointing to work to be done
>
> 4.  without capturing and addressing the limitations of KG as KR, and the
> work that needs to be done to overcome those limitations, the
> workshop/report falls short of its aims
>
> Now, given that KGs are an important and interesting topic, and given the
> quality and quantity and brilliance of the participants, from my
> perspective, the outcome of the workshop reads comparatively trivial
>
> I am perplexed what may be the cause that level of triviality, other than
> some hidden agenda
>
> While I am sure you all had a great party, from a scholarly perspective
> based on the report
> sounds like not the best use public resources, but agree that much
> research  these days is like that-
>
> Thank you, and apologies for the lack of diplomacy in expressing my
> concerns
>
> PDM
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 12:08 AM Alexander Garcia Castro <
> alexgarciac@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> KGraphs are an umbrella term that brings together more than one single
>> tech a practical implementation/path that exemplifies an application of AI
>> (semantics, linked data, ontolgies, etc). KGraphs offer more flexibility
>> and scale better than pure ontology based solutions -IMHO. in my experience
>> modeling on a KGraph makes it easier when dealing with real data in
>> enterprise enviroments, also, KGraphs scale as needed. There are issues
>> with KGraphs, I should better say with commercial KGraphs solutions and
>> there is a lot of room for improvement; this is all true. We use Kgraphs
>> for exploring scientific literature at a scale that would otherwise be very
>> difficult to manage. We get from a KGraph pretty much the same in terms of
>> query formulation, and some times more, as we would get from a SPARQL
>> endpoint. the Kgraph allows us to add more data and remodel as needed
>> considering only bussines constraints.
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 4:19 PM Joshua Shinavier <joshsh@uber.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Paola,
>>>
>>> OK; I look forward to a more detailed argument in your article. So far,
>>> I have only skimmed the paper you linked, but I can see that -- apart from
>>> the fact that it is a little dated and does not mention currently popular
>>> graph embedding techniques such as GraphSAGE (usual disclaimer: I am no
>>> expert in embeddings) -- the criticism applies at best to one relatively
>>> inessential and separable aspect of enterprise knowledge graphs. W.r.t.
>>> information extraction, I can tell you from experience that dealing with
>>> unreliable or incomplete data, while an inevitable fact of life, is not
>>> necessarily a problem one should attempt to solve at the KG level. At least
>>> 9 times out of 10, the problem is better addressed at the level of
>>> individual data sources, where the solutions are very domain-specific.
>>>
>>> "Knowledge graph" may be a marketing term, but IMO it represents a shift
>>> away from pure research and toward technologies that scale well and which
>>> serve real-world needs, as Steffen mentioned. This is a good thing; it
>>> means that KR is succeeding, even if it is doing so in unanticipated ways.
>>> It is important to acknowledge the rise of lightweight KR (if I may use
>>> that term) in the developer community via data models such as property
>>> graphs which dispense with formal semantics altogether, and I think it is
>>> also telling that many of the large-scale corporate knowledge graphs, at
>>> their core, are not based on either RDF or property graphs, but on
>>> special-purpose data models which have been designed in-house. I will tell
>>> you about ours (Uber's) in a paper currently in internal review. Last week,
>>> I had a chance to ask Xiao Ling (Apple) and Scott Meyer (LinkedIn) about
>>> theirs. For Siri's knowledge base, Apple is using an RDF-like data model
>>> (supporting "triples" with "qualifiers" that enable reification), but not
>>> RDF proper. For the Economic Graph, LinkedIn is using a Datalog-based data
>>> model which again is based on triples, but not on RDF or PG. This tells me
>>> that the standards built for knowledge representation on the Web are being
>>> used not so much for their associated formal properties, but as a means of
>>> data interchange -- a point that was made, and which really stood out to me
>>> in Paul Groth's trip report.
>>>
>>> tl;dr plenty of things appear to have been said at the seminar which are
>>> more actionable than much of the established theory around KR and SW. At
>>> the same time, I believe there is tendency now to look back at SW and
>>> earlier work and attempt to learn from it, adding more formality around
>>> ontologies, inference, and rules where it makes sense to do so.
>>>
>>> Josh
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 12:18 AM Paola Di Maio <paoladimaio10@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Joshua
>>>>
>>>> thanks for the opportunity to clarify and apologies for the brashness
>>>> of my remarks
>>>>
>>>> I did not mean that they KGs are not a type of KR, which arguably they
>>>> are
>>>>
>>>> but they do not satisfy KR adequacy criteria in many ways (I ll address
>>>> that more extensively
>>>> in an article) and come with limitations, an example linked below
>>>>
>>>> The  lack of acknowledgment of such limitations is *startling *for me,
>>>> and shows superficiality given that the workshop participants are leading
>>>> researchers and colleagues, and include best of the sw researchers crop
>>>> otherwise in many ways
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> PDM
>>>>
>>>> this article explains some of the issues with KG, and especially using
>>>> KGs as sole KR methods
>>>>
>>>> https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/D17-1184
>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.aclweb.org_anthology_D17-2D1184&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=aNjZ2E21bTW1NHEQwPsqbJsQlCISkjiFHveUp3Qsp-U&s=TeWvt9PiUMH_e7fu6xP8vySKoOGki8BZFCsQWbp95SI&e=>
>>>>
>>>>   Unfortunately, information extraction approaches for KG construction
>>>> must overcome complex, unreliable, and incomplete data. Many machine
>>>> learning methods have been proposed to address the challenge of cleaning
>>>> and completing KGs. One popular class of methods learn embeddings that
>>>> translate entities and relationships into a latent subspace, then use this
>>>> latent representation to derive additional, unobserved facts and score
>>>> existing facts (Bordes et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2014; Lin et al., 2015)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 2:26 PM Joshua Shinavier <joshsh@uber.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Maybe I need to read some of the past threads for context, but this
>>>>> dismissive statement took me by surprise. In what way are KGs not KR? If
>>>>> that were a true, it would deeply affect my own outlook and messaging. I
>>>>> ought to at least try to understand your point of view. Are you referring
>>>>> to some very limited and traditional definition of KR? Insofar as an RDF
>>>>> statement is a claim about the world
>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.w3.org_TR_rdf11-2Dconcepts_&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=aNjZ2E21bTW1NHEQwPsqbJsQlCISkjiFHveUp3Qsp-U&s=1ijuTw-9KTkWBdXnIoz2Hfg4v4uthQl0MBbr6mMEePs&e=>,
>>>>> the humblest RDF graph is a representation of knowledge. So...
>>>>>
>>>>> My $0.02 is that KG is a particular, typically simple and pragmatic
>>>>> form KR by a new name -- a pretty uncontroversial point of view, I would
>>>>> have thought. Not looking for a debate, just clarification.
>>>>>
>>>>> FWIW, I was not involved in the Dagstuhl event, but really appreciated
>>>>> the trip reports
>>>>>
>>>>> Josh
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 11:07 PM Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Juan and all
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I finally got hold of the report, courtesy of Alex P
>>>>>> /
>>>>>> aic.ai.wu.ac.at/~polleres/publications/bona-etal-DagstuhlReport18371.pdf
>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__aic.ai.wu.ac.at_-7Epolleres_publications_bona-2Detal-2DDagstuhlReport18371.pdf&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=gaA1u5UYZsI_ZXB4pczTes7Z4Y5XsNf17VTvGW4NoQA&s=kzwa3xf1kft82oywOFTmr3190FCOd5k-5puzviUCFy8&e=>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As a scholar in KR, I am concerned at the suggestion that KG are
>>>>>> being proposed
>>>>>> as KR,  and at the superficiality of the content of this report, and
>>>>>> I am aggravated to note the complete lack of acknowledgement of  the
>>>>>> limitations of this approach.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Sounds like a good example of ineptitude, inadequacy and corruption
>>>>>> heavily influencing academic research and the field of AI KR
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *two cents still allowed?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> PDM
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 6:41 AM Juan Sequeda <juanfederico@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Last week there was a Dagstuhl seminar on: Knowledge Graphs: New
>>>>>>> Directions for Knowledge Representation on the Semantic Web
>>>>>>> https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=18371
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.dagstuhl.de_en_program_calendar_semhp_-3Fsemnr-3D18371&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=gaA1u5UYZsI_ZXB4pczTes7Z4Y5XsNf17VTvGW4NoQA&s=woJkjA7MzT9frcSHwr6o-5llrKuG9HDjHT-_mVaNkTQ&e=>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A formal report will be coming out soon. For the mean time, some
>>>>>>> folks have written their own reports. I'm sure folks in this community
>>>>>>> would be interest:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Eva Blomqvist:
>>>>>>> http://blog.liu.se/semanticweb/2018/09/15/dagstuhl-seminar-on-knowledge-graphs/
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__blog.liu.se_semanticweb_2018_09_15_dagstuhl-2Dseminar-2Don-2Dknowledge-2Dgraphs_&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=gaA1u5UYZsI_ZXB4pczTes7Z4Y5XsNf17VTvGW4NoQA&s=G69b8OTXXr2Zy497b6s0DYeIAvJdAhuromY8ZC7V8AY&e=>
>>>>>>> Paul Groth:
>>>>>>> https://thinklinks.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/trip-report-dagstuhl-seminar-on-knowledge-graphs/
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__thinklinks.wordpress.com_2018_09_18_trip-2Dreport-2Ddagstuhl-2Dseminar-2Don-2Dknowledge-2Dgraphs_&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=gaA1u5UYZsI_ZXB4pczTes7Z4Y5XsNf17VTvGW4NoQA&s=R8dpWgBXbjHVDqM2etP3BiTZPTPGcwsF-VmotEHrLUw&e=>
>>>>>>> Juan Sequeda:
>>>>>>> http://www.juansequeda.com/blog/2018/09/18/trip-report-on-knowledge-graph-dagstuhl-seminar/
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.juansequeda.com_blog_2018_09_18_trip-2Dreport-2Don-2Dknowledge-2Dgraph-2Ddagstuhl-2Dseminar_&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=gaA1u5UYZsI_ZXB4pczTes7Z4Y5XsNf17VTvGW4NoQA&s=6A-VzuGsMu0_Ey3Mp-TSXjUM4-p3MK85sjcaJZEpXzo&e=>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Juan
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Juan Sequeda, Ph.D
>>>>>>> www.juansequeda.com
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.juansequeda.com&d=DwMFaQ&c=r2dcLCtU9q6n0vrtnDw9vg&r=yHrezOOUvTAeD_KgsElyJw&m=gaA1u5UYZsI_ZXB4pczTes7Z4Y5XsNf17VTvGW4NoQA&s=S2dSQ7Xed01N86mt8fYTovscWTGH6x-VYNyYknz6abo&e=>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>
>> --
>> Alexander Garcia
>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Garcia
>> http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/75943.html
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgarciac
>>
>>
>