Re: Questions about Reasoner Accountability

Oops.. the other example was
https://github.com/josd/eye/tree/master/reasoning/witch

-- https://josd.github.io


On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 12:31 PM Jos De Roo <josderoo@gmail.com> wrote:

> You could have a look at https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Logic.html and
> find "proof"
> or have a look at https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Rules.html and find "Oh
> yeah?".
>
> To make it concrete, a semantic web reasoner like Cwm
> https://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/doc/cwm
> can check the proofs made by another reasoner like Eye
> https://josd.github.io/eye/
> For a simple example see
> https://github.com/josd/eye/tree/master/reasoning/socrates or
> https://github.com/josd/eye/tree/master/reasoning/socrates
>
> Jos
>
> PS a bit related but still in progress is
> http://josd.github.io/Talks/2022/06welding/#(1)
>
> -- https://josd.github.io
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 12:01 PM Chris Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Semantic Web Community,
>>
>> I have written on this list before about my project but I wanted to
>> bring up a particular problem that I have with reasoners that will
>> require some background explanation before I can describe the problem.
>>
>> My project encodes some of the most important genealogies of medieval
>> Ireland in RDF (git repo: https://github.com/cyocum/irish-gen, blog:
>> https://cyocum.github.io/).  Because I am often the only person
>> working on this, I use reasoners to extrapolate the often implicit
>> information in the data.  This saves me much time and I only need to
>> translate exactly what is in the source material.  I have discussed
>> some of the problems that I have encountered a few years ago
>> (https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2018Dec/0088.html).
>> I do not want to bring that back up but if someone is interested in
>> any of those problems, please feel free to email me and I would
>> happily discuss some of them with you.
>>
>> When I discuss some of the benefits of using a reasoner to some of my
>> Humanities based colleagues, one of the many things that come up is:
>> how do I check that the reasoner has reasoned through this correctly?
>> Essentially, this is about accountability.  "Computer says so" does not
>> carry much weight.  If I cannot justify why a reasoner has made a
>> certain choice when inferring predicates, some of the force of the
>> system is lost.  Additionally, if I run a SPARQL query and the result
>> that is returned is not what I had expected, having a "meta-query" of
>> the reasoner can help me find bugs in my own data that I can track
>> down and fix.  I do understand that I can always go back to the
>> original source material and try to track down the error that way but
>> it would something like this would make it much easier in situations
>> where the material is still in manuscript form and difficult to
>> decipher.  Additionally, this is a trust problem.  People who do not
>> work with computers at this level do not feel that they are in control
>> and this raises their defences and prompts questions of this kind.
>>
>> To sum up, my questions are:
>>
>> * Does something like this make sense?
>> * Does something like this already exist and I have not noticed it?
>> * Are there other ways of doing something like this without needing more
>> code?
>> * Is this something that is technically possible for reasoners? I assume
>> so but getting expert
>>   advice is usually a good idea.
>> * If the first two questions are in the negative: is there anyone in the
>> community working
>>   on something like this that I could collaborate with? Even if it is
>> just in a UAT style where
>>   I run my dataset and send back any funny results.
>>
>> Thank you for reading and thanks in advance.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Christopher Yocum
>>
>