Knowledge level modeling is the process of theorizing over observations about a world and, to some extent, explaining the behavior of an agent as it interacts with its environment.
Crucial to the understanding of knowledge level modeling are Allen Newell's notions of the knowledge level, operators, and an agent's goal state.
- The knowledge level refers to the knowledge an agent has about its world.
- Operators are what can be applied to an agent to affect its state.
- An agent's goal state is the status reached after the appropriate operators have been applied to transition from a previous, non-goal state.
Essentially, knowledge level modeling involves evaluating an agent's world and all possible states and with that information constructing a model that depicts the interrelations and pathways between the various states. With this model, various problem solving methods (i.e. prediction, classification, explanation, tutoring, qualitative reasoning, planning, etc.) can be viewed in a uniform fashion.
In, Menzies proposes a new knowledge level modeling approach, called KLB, which specifies that "a knowledge base should be divided into domain-specific facts and domain-independent abstract problem solving inference procedures." In his method, abductive reasoning is used to find assumptions which, when combined with theories, achieve the desired goals of the system.
For a good example of abductive reasoning, look at logical reasoning.
Famous quotes containing the words knowledge, level and/or modeling:
“What matters it that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he has it, he gets little higher. Is he not always infinitely removed from the end, and is not the duration of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it lasts ten years longer?”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Helping children at a level of genuine intellectual inquiry takes imagination on the part of the adult. Even more, it takes the courage to become a resource in unfamiliar areas of knowledge and in ones for which one has no taste. But parents, no less than teachers, must respect a child’s mind and not exploit it for their own vanity or ambition, or to soothe their own anxiety.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.”
—Sherry Turkle (b. 1948)