The KM / KnEd System: An Integrated Approach to Building Large-Scale Multifunctional Knowledge Bases

Book One

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 12

Student Abstracts

In 1987, Dr. Bruce Porter began work at the University of Texas at Austin on the Botany Knowledge Base Project. The goal of the project is to develop a largescale multi-functional knowledge base in the area of Botany. This Botany Knowledge Base (BKB) is used to support research projects in question answering, automated modeling, and intelligent tutoring. Due to the size and complexity of the BKB, a decision was made in 1990 to begin construction of a new knowledge representation language and interface to support the knowledge base. The knowledge representation language was named KM, for Knowledge Manager, and the interface was named KnEd, for Knowledge Editor. The KM/KnEd system is similar to Doug Lenat’s CYC project and Doug Skuce’s CODE4 system.