Panel: Knowledge Representation Meets Knowledge Acquisition: What Are the Needs and Where Is the Leverage?

Working on knowledge acquisition requires making a commitment to a particular knowledge representation. This panel will explore the implications of that commitment, focusing on the ways in which choice of a particular representation can facilitate or hinder the knowledge acquisition task. Of particular interest is the role played by the presence or absence of a formal semantics in the representation language. Knowledge representations used in knowledge acquisition vary in their formality from unstructured LISP through the minimal structure imposed by production rules, all the way up to highly formalized languages like those in the U-ONE family. What this panel seeks to do is to bring together researchers with backgrounds in knowledgebased systems, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge representation. The panel members represent a range of styles from pragmatic to theoretical, and will be asked to compare and contrast their experiences with respect to questions like the following: