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Chapter 3
Knowledge Representation

Knowledge representation: Knowledge representation and reasoning (KR, KRR) is the part of
Artificial intelligence which concerned with AI agents thinking and how thinking contributes
to intelligent behavior of agents.

What to Represent?

Following are the kind of knowledge which needs to be represented in AI systems:

o Object: All the facts about objects in our world domain. E.g., Guitars contains strings,
trumpets are brass instruments.
o Events: Events are the actions which occur in our world.
o Performance: It describe behavior which involves knowledge about how to do things.
o Meta-knowledge: It is knowledge about what we know.
o Facts: Facts are the truths about the real world and what we represent.
o Knowledge-Base: The central component of the knowledge-based agents is the
knowledge base. It is represented as KB. The Knowledgebase is a group of the
Sentences (Here, sentences are used as a technical term and not identical with the
English language).

Knowledge: Knowledge is awareness or familiarity gained by experiences of facts, data, and

situations. Following are the types of knowledge in artificial intelligence:

Types of knowledge

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1. Declarative Knowledge:

o Declarative knowledge is to know about something.

o It includes concepts, facts, and objects.
o It is also called descriptive knowledge and expressed in declarativesentences.
o It is simpler than procedural language.

2. Procedural Knowledge

o It is also known as imperative knowledge.

o Procedural knowledge is a type of knowledge which is responsible for knowing how to
do something.
o It can be directly applied to any task.
o It includes rules, strategies, procedures, agendas, etc.
o Procedural knowledge depends on the task on which it can be applied.

3. Meta-knowledge:

o Knowledge about the other types of knowledge is called Meta-knowledge.

4. Heuristic knowledge:

o Heuristic knowledge is representing knowledge of some experts in a filed or subject.

o Heuristic knowledge is rules of thumb based on previous experiences, awareness of
approaches, and which are good to work but not guaranteed.

5. Structural knowledge:

o Structural knowledge is basic knowledge to problem-solving.

o It describes relationships between various concepts such as kind of, part of, and
grouping of something.
o It describes the relationship that exists between concepts or objects.

AI knowledge cycle:

An Artificial intelligence system has the following components for displaying intelligent
behavior:

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o Perception
o Learning
o Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
o Planning
o Execution

The above diagram is showing how an AI system can interact with the real world and what
components help it to show intelligence. AI system has Perception component by which it
retrieves information from its environment. It can be visual, audio or another form of sensory
input. The learning component is responsible for learning from data captured by Perception
comportment. In the complete cycle, the main components are knowledge representation and
Reasoning. These two components are involved in showing the intelligence in machine-like
humans. These two components are independent with each other but also coupled together. The
planning and execution depend on analysis of Knowledge representation and reasoning.

Knowledge-based agents:

o Knowledge-based agents are those agents who have the capability of maintaining an
internal state of knowledge, reason over that knowledge, update their knowledge
after observations and take actions. These agents can represent the world with
some formal representation and act intelligently.
o Knowledge-based agents are composed of two main parts:
o Knowledge-base and
o Inference system.

A knowledge-based agent must able to do the following:

o An agent should be able to represent states, actions, etc.

o An agent Should be able to incorporate new percepts
o An agent can update the internal representation of the world
o An agent can deduce the internal representation of the world
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o An agent can deduce appropriate actions.

The architecture of knowledge-based agent:

The above diagram is representing a generalized architecture for a knowledge-based

agent. The knowledge-based agent (KBA) take input from the environment by
perceiving the environment. The input is taken by the inference engine of the agent and
which also communicate with KB to decide as per the knowledge store in KB. The
learning element of KBA regularly updates the KB by learning new knowledge.

Inference system

Inference means deriving new sentences from old. Inference system allows us to add a new
sentence to the knowledge base. A sentence is a proposition about the world. Inference system
applies logical rules to the KB to deduce new information.

Inference system generates new facts so that an agent can update the KB. An inference system
works mainly in two rules which are given as:

o Forward chaining
o Backward chaining

Operations Performed by KBA

Following are three operations which are performed by KBA in order to show the
intelligent behavior:

1. TELL: This operation tells the knowledge base what it perceives from the
environment.
2. ASK: This operation asks the knowledge base what action it should perform.
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3. Perform: It performs the selected action.

A generic knowledge-based agent:

Following is the structure outline of a generic knowledge-based agents program:

function KB-AGENT(percept):

persistent: KB, a knowledge base

t, a counter, initially 0, indicating time

TELL(KB, MAKE-PERCEPT-SENTENCE(percept, t))

Action = ASK(KB, MAKE-ACTION-QUERY(t))

TELL(KB, MAKE-ACTION-SENTENCE(action, t))

t=t+1

return action

The knowledge-based agent takes percept as input and returns an action as output. The agent
maintains the knowledge base, KB, and it initially has some background knowledge of the real
world. It also has a counter to indicate the time for the whole process, and this counter is
initialized with zero.

Each time when the function is called, it performs its three operations:

o Firstly it TELLs the KB what it perceives.

o Secondly, it asks KB what action it should take
o Third agent program TELLS the KB that which action was chosen.

The MAKE-PERCEPT-SENTENCE generates a sentence as setting that the agent perceived

the given percept at the given time.

The MAKE-ACTION-QUERY generates a sentence to ask which action should be done at the
current time.

MAKE-ACTION-SENTENCE generates a sentence which asserts that the chosen action was
executed.

Various levels of knowledge-based agent:

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A knowledge-based agent can be viewed at different levels which are given below:

1. Knowledge level

Knowledge level is the first level of knowledge-based agent, and in this level, we need to
specify what the agent knows, and what the agent goals are. With these specifications, we can
fix its behavior. For example, suppose an automated taxi agent needs to go from a station A to
station B, and he knows the way from A to B, so this comes at the knowledge level.

2. Logical level:

At this level, we understand that how the knowledge representation of knowledge is stored. At
this level, sentences are encoded into different logics. At the logical level, an encoding of
knowledge into logical sentences occurs. At the logical level we can expect to the automated
taxi agent to reach to the destination B.

3. Implementation level:

This is the physical representation of logic and knowledge. At the implementation level agent
perform actions as per logical and knowledge level. At this level, an automated taxi agent
actually implement his knowledge and logic so that he can reach to the destination.

Approaches to designing a knowledge-based agent:

There are mainly two approaches to build a knowledge-based agent:

1. Declarative approach: We can create a knowledge-based agent by initializing with

an empty knowledge base and telling the agent all the sentences with which we want to
start with. This approach is called Declarative approach.

2. Procedural approach: In the procedural approach, we directly encode desired

behavior as a program code. Which means we just need to write a program that already
encodes the desired behavior or agent.

The Wampus World: The Wumpus world is a simple world example to illustrate the worth
of a knowledge-based agent and to represent knowledge representation. It was inspired by a
video game Hunt the Wumpus by Gregory Yob in 1973.

The Wumpus world is a cave which has 4/4 rooms connected with passageways. So there are
total 16 rooms which are connected with each other. We have a knowledge-based agent who
will go forward in this world. The cave has a room with a beast which is called Wumpus, who
eats anyone who enters the room. The Wumpus can be shot by the agent, but the agent has a
single arrow. In the Wumpus world, there are some Pits rooms which are bottomless, and if
agent falls in Pits, then he will be stuck there forever. The exciting thing with this cave is that
in one room there is a possibility of finding a heap of gold. So the agent goal is to find the gold
and climb out the cave without fallen into Pits or eaten by Wumpus. The agent will get a reward
if he comes out with gold, and he will get a penalty if eaten by Wumpus or falls in the pit.

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Following is a sample diagram for representing the Wumpus world. It is showing some rooms
with Pits, one room with Wumpus and one agent at (1, 1) square location of the world.

Note: Here Wumpus is static and cannot move.

There are also some components which can help the agent to navigate the cave. These
components are given as follows:

a. The rooms adjacent to the Wumpus room are smelly, so that it would have some stench.
b. The room adjacent to PITs has a breeze, so if the agent reaches near to PIT, then he will
perceive the breeze.
c. There will be glitter in the room if and only if the room has gold.
d. The Wumpus can be killed by the agent if the agent is facing to it, and Wumpus will
emit a horrible scream which can be heard anywhere in the cave.

PEAS description of Wumpus world:

To explain the Wumpus world we have given PEAS description as below:

Performance measure:

o +1000 reward points if the agent comes out of the cave with the gold.
o -1000 points penalty for being eaten by the Wumpus or falling into the pit.
o -1 for each action, and -10 for using an arrow.
o The game ends if either agent dies or came out of the cave.

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Environment:

o A 4*4 grid of rooms.

o The agent initially in room square [1, 1], facing toward the right.
o Location of Wumpus and gold are chosen randomly except the first square [1,1].
o Each square of the cave can be a pit with probability 0.2 except the first square.

Actuators:

o Left turn,
o Right turn
o Move forward
o Grab
o Release
o Shoot.

Sensors:

o The agent will perceive the stench if he is in the room adjacent to the Wumpus. (Not
diagonally).
o The agent will perceive breeze if he is in the room directly adjacent to the Pit.
o The agent will perceive the glitter in the room where the gold is present.
o The agent will perceive the bump if he walks into a wall.
o When the Wumpus is shot, it emits a horrible scream which can be perceived anywhere
in the cave.
o These percepts can be represented as five element list, in which we will have different
indicators for each sensor.
o Example if agent perceives stench, breeze, but no glitter, no bump, and no scream then
it can be represented as:
[Stench, Breeze, None, None, None].

The Wumpus world Properties:

o Partially observable: The Wumpus world is partially observable because the agent can
only perceive the close environment such as an adjacent room.

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o Deterministic: It is deterministic, as the result and outcome of the world are already
known.
o Sequential: The order is important, so it is sequential.
o Static: It is static as Wumpus and Pits are not moving.
o Discrete: The environment is discrete.
o One agent: The environment is a single agent as we have one agent only and Wumpus
is not considered as an agent.

Exploring the Wumpus world:

Now we will explore the Wumpus world and will determine how the agent will find its goal by
applying logical reasoning.

Agent's First step:

Initially, the agent is in the first room or on the square [1,1], and we already know that this
room is safe for the agent, so to represent on the below diagram (a) that room is safe we will
add symbol OK. Symbol A is used to represent agent, symbol B for the breeze, G for Glitter or
gold, V for the visited room, P for pits, W for Wumpus.

At Room [1,1] agent does not feel any breeze or any Stench which means the adjacent squares
are also OK.

Agent's second Step:

Now agent needs to move forward, so it will either move to [1, 2], or [2,1]. Let's suppose agent
moves to the room [2, 1], at this room agent perceives some breeze which means Pit is around
this room. The pit can be in [3, 1], or [2,2], so we will add symbol P? to say that, is this Pit
room?

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Now agent will stop and think and will not make any harmful move. The agent will go back to
the [1, 1] room. The room [1,1], and [2,1] are visited by the agent, so we will use symbol V to
represent the visited squares.

Agent's third step:

At the third step, now agent will move to the room [1,2] which is OK. In the room [1,2] agent
perceives a stench which means there must be a Wumpus nearby. But Wumpus cannot be in
the room [1,1] as by rules of the game, and also not in [2,2] (Agent had not detected any stench
when he was at [2,1]). Therefore agent infers that Wumpus is in the room [1,3], and in current
state, there is no breeze which means in [2,2] there is no Pit and no Wumpus. So it is safe, and
we will mark it OK, and the agent moves further in [2,2].

Agent's fourth step:

At room [2,2], here no stench and no breezes present so let's suppose agent decides to move to
[2,3]. At room [2,3] agent perceives glitter, so it should grab the gold and climb out of the cave.

Logic: logic is the systematic approach to structure and evaluate arguments, drawing
conclusions from given premises.

Propositional Logic:

Propositional logic (PL) is the simplest form of logic where all the statements are made by
propositions. A proposition is a declarative statement which is either true or false. It is a
technique of knowledge representation in logical and mathematical form.

Example:

a) It is Sunday.

b) The Sun rises from West (False proposition)

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c) 3+3= 7(False proposition)

d) 5 is a prime number.

Following are some basic facts about propositional logic:

o Propositional logic is also called Boolean logic as it works on 0 and 1.

o In propositional logic, we use symbolic variables to represent the logic, and we can use
any symbol for a representing a proposition, such A, B, C, P, Q, R, etc.
o Propositions can be either true or false, but it cannot be both.
o Propositional logic consists of an object, relations or function, and logical connectives.
o These connectives are also called logical operators.
o The propositions and connectives are the basic elements of the propositional logic.
o Connectives can be said as a logical operator which connects two sentences.
o A proposition formula which is always true is called tautology, and it is also called a
valid sentence.
o A proposition formula which is always false is called Contradiction.
o A proposition formula which has both true and false values is called contingency.
o Statements which are questions, commands, or opinions are not propositions such as
"Where is Rohini", "How are you", "What is your name", are not propositions.

Syntax of propositional logic:

The syntax of propositional logic defines the allowable sentences for the knowledge
representation. There are two types of Propositions:

a. Atomic Propositions
b. Compound propositions

o Atomic Proposition: Atomic propositions are the simple propositions. It consists of a

single proposition symbol. These are the sentences which must be either true or false.

Example:

a) 2+2 is 4, it is an atomic proposition as it is a true fact.

b) "The Sun is cold" is also a proposition as it is a false fact.

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o Compound proposition: Compound propositions are constructed by combining

simpler or atomic propositions, using parenthesis and logical connectives.

Example:

a) "It is raining today, and street is wet."

b) "Ankit is a doctor, and his clinic is in Mumbai."

Logical Connectives:

Logical connectives are used to connect two simpler propositions or representing a sentence
logically. We can create compound propositions with the help of logical connectives. There are
mainly five connectives, which are given as follows:

1. Negation: A sentence such as ¬ P is called negation of P. A literal can be either Positive

literal or negative literal.
2. Conjunction: A sentence which has ∧ connective such as, P ∧ Q is called a
conjunction.
Example: Rohan is intelligent and hardworking. It can be written as,
P= Rohan is intelligent,
Q= Rohan is hardworking. → P∧ Q.
3. Disjunction: A sentence which has ∨ connective, such as P ∨ Q. is called disjunction,
where P and Q are the propositions.
Example: "Ritika is a doctor or Engineer",
Here P= Ritika is Doctor. Q= Ritika is Doctor, so we can write it as P ∨ Q.
4. Implication: A sentence such as P → Q, is called an implication. Implications are also
known as if-then rules. It can be represented as
If it is raining, then the street is wet.
Let P= It is raining, and Q= Street is wet, so it is represented as P → Q
5. Biconditional: A sentence such as P⇔ Q is a Biconditional sentence, example If I
am breathing, then I am alive
P= I am breathing, Q= I am alive, it can be represented as P ⇔ Q.

Following is the summarized table for Propositional Logic Connectives:

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Truth Table:

In propositional logic, we need to know the truth values of propositions in all possible
scenarios. We can combine all the possible combination with logical connectives, and the
representation of these combinations in a tabular format is called Truth table. Following are
the truth table for all logical connectives:

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Truth table with three propositions:

We can build a proposition composing three propositions P, Q, and R. This truth table is made-
up of 8n Tuples as we have taken three proposition symbols.

Precedence of connectives:

Just like arithmetic operators, there is a precedence order for propositional connectors or logical
operators. This order should be followed while evaluating a propositional problem. Following
is the list of the precedence order for operators:

Logical equivalence:

Logical equivalence is one of the features of propositional logic. Two propositions are said to
be logically equivalent if and only if the columns in the truth table are identical to each other.

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Let's take two propositions A and B, so for logical equivalence, we can write it as A⇔B.
In below truth table we can see that column for ¬A∨ B and A→B, are identical hence A is
Equivalent to B

Properties of Operators:

o Commutativity:
o P∧ Q= Q ∧ P, or
o P ∨ Q = Q ∨ P.
o Associativity:
o (P ∧ Q) ∧ R= P ∧ (Q ∧ R),
o (P ∨ Q) ∨ R= P ∨ (Q ∨ R)
o Identity element:
o P ∧ True = P,
o P ∨ True= True.
o Distributive:
o P∧ (Q ∨ R) = (P ∧ Q) ∨ (P ∧ R).
o P ∨ (Q ∧ R) = (P ∨ Q) ∧ (P ∨ R).
o DE Morgan's Law:
o ¬ (P ∧ Q) = (¬P) ∨ (¬Q)
o ¬ (P ∨ Q) = (¬ P) ∧ (¬Q).
o Double-negation elimination:
o ¬ (¬P) = P.

Limitations of Propositional logic:

o We cannot represent relations like ALL, some, or none with propositional logic.
Example:
a. All the girls are intelligent.
b. Some apples are sweet.

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o Propositional logic has limited expressive power.

o In propositional logic, we cannot describe statements in terms of their properties or
logical relationships.

Propositional Theorem Proving

a different approach to using logic to solve problems is to use logical rules of inference to
generate logical implications
in some cases, this can be less work than model-checking (i.e. generating a truth table) or even
SAT solving
plus, logical rules of inference are at the level of logical reasoning that humans consciously
strive to do
theorem-proving is interested in entailment, e.g. given a logical sentence A and a logical
sentence B, we can ask if A entails B
the general idea is that sentence A is what the agent knows, and sentence B is something that
the agent can infer from what it knows
sentence A might be very big, i.e. the entire “brain” of an agent encoded in logic
an important basic result in logic is the deduction theorem, which says:
A entails B if, and only if, A => B (A implies B) is a tautology (i.e. valid for all assignments of
values to its variables)

so we can answer the question “Does A entail B?” by showing that the sentence A => B is a
tautology
recall that a sentence is unsatisfiable if no assignment of values to its variables makes it true
so A => B is a tautology, then !(A=>B) is unsatisfiable, and !(A=>B) == !(!(A & !B)) == A &
!B
so we can re-write the deduction theorem like this:
A entails B if, and only if, A & !B is unsatisfiable

this means you can use a SAT solver to figure out entailment!
Rules of Inference
recall that there are various rules of inference that can be used to create proofs, i.e. chains of
correct inferences
e.g. modus ponens is this rule of inference:

A, A => B
--------- modus ponens
B

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this rule says that if you are given a sentence A, and a sentence A => B, you may infer B
e.g. and-elimination is this pair of rules:

A&B
----- and-elimination
A

A&B
-----
B

these two rules encode the (obvious!) fact that if the sentence A & B is true, then A is true, and
also B is true
logical equivalences can also be stated as inference rules, e.g.:

A <==> B
---------------
(A=>B) & (B=>A)

there are many inference rules, and choosing a reasonable set of rules for a theorem-prover
turns out to be important

 we can think of the application of one rule of inference as an action performed to the
state of the world, i.e. the rule of inference adds more facts to the knowledge base
 if there are multiple inference rules to choose from, then we need knowledge (i.e.
heuristics) to help decide which rule to use
o or we could rely on backtracking, i.e. just pick a rule at random, apply it, and
keep going until it “seems” like a proof is not being reached
 plus, how do we know that the rules of inference we are using are complete, i.e. if a
proof exists, how do we know our set of inference rules will find it?
o e.g. suppose the two and-elimination rules were our only rules of inference; is
this enough to prove any entailment in propositional logic?
 no!
 for example, (P | P) -> P is clearly true, but and-elimination doesn’t
apply to this sentence

Proof by Resolution

it turns out that only one particular inference rule is needed to prove any logical entailment (that
can be proved): the resolution rule
in a 2-variable form, the resolution inference rule is this (| here means “or”):

A | B, !B
----------
A
resolution

A | !B, B
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----------
A

in English, the first rules says that if A or B is true, and B is not true, then A must be true; the
second rule says the same thing, but B and !B are swapped
note that A | !B is logically equivalent to B -> A, and so the resolution rules can be translated to
this:

!B -> A, !B
----------- variation of modus ponens
A

B -> A, B
--------- modus ponens
A

in other words, resolution inference could be viewed as a variation of inference with modus
ponens
we can generalize resolution as follows:

A_1 | A_2 | ... | A_i | ... | A_n !A_i

----------------------------------------- resolution generalized
A_1 | A_2 | ... | A_i-1 | A_i+1... | A_n

we’ve written A_i and !A_i, but those could be swapped: the key is that they are
complementary literals
notice that both sentence above and below the inference line are CNF clauses

 recall that a CNF clause consists of literals (a variable, or the negation of a variable), or-
ed together

so resolution can be stated conveniently in terms of clauses, e.g.:

Clause_1 L_i opposite of literal L_i is in Clause_1

--------------
Clause_2 Clause_2 is Clause_1 with opposite of literal L_i removed

here, L_i is a literal that has the opposite sign of a literal in Clause_1

 i.e. L_i is the complement of a literal in Clause_1

Clause_2 is the same as Clause_1, but with the literal that is the opposite of L_i removed
e.g.:

(A | !B | !C) !A A and !A are complementary literals

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-----------------
!B | !C

(A | !B | !C) C C and !C are complementary literals

-----------------
A | !B

full resolution generalizes this even further to two clauses:

Clause_1 Clause_2
------------------ full resolution
Clause_3

here, we assume that some literal L appears in Clause_1, and the complement of L appears in
Clause_2
Clause_3 contains all the literals (or-ed together) from both Clause_1 and Clause_2, except for
L and its opposite — those are not in Clause_3
e.g.:

(A | !B | !C) (!A | !C | D) A and !A are complementary literals

----------------------------
!B | !C | D

what is surprising is that full resolution is complete: it can be used to proved any entailment
(assuming the entailment can be proven)
to do this, resolution requires that all sentences be converted to CNF

 this can always be done … see the textbook for a sketch of the basic idea
 the same requirement for most SAT solvers!

next, recall from above that if A entails B, then A & !B is unsatisfiable

 this is a consequence of the deduction theorem

resolution theorem proving proves that A entails B by proving that A & !B is unsatisfiable
it follows these steps:

 A & !B is converted to CNF

 clauses with complementary literals are chosen and resolved (i.e. the resolution rule is
applied to them to remove the literal and its complement) and added as a new clause in
the knowledge base
 this continues until one of two things happens:
1. no new clause can be added, which means that A does not entail B
 in other words, A & !B is satisfiable
2. two clauses resolve to yield the empty clause, which means that A entails B

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 the empty clause means there is a contradiction, i.e. if P and !P are

clauses then we can apply resolution to them to get the “empty clause”
 clearly, if both P and !P are in the same knowledge base, then it is
inconsistent since P & !P is false for all values of P

Example. KB = {P->Q, Q->R}

 does KB entail P->R?
 yes it does, and lets use resolution to prove this
 to prove KB entails P->R, we will prove that KB & !(P->R) is unsatisfiable
 first we convert KB & !(P->R) to CNF:

 !P | Q
 !Q | R
 P
 !R
 next we pick pairs of clauses and resolve them (i.e. apply the resolution inference rule)
if we can; we add any clauses produced by this to the collection of clauses:

 !P | Q
 !Q | R
 P
 !R

 !P | R // from resolving (!P | Q) with (!Q | R)
 Q // from resolving (!P | Q) with (P)
 !Q // from resolving (!Q | R) with (!R)
 we have Q and !Q, meaning we’ve reach a contradiction
 this means KB & !(P->R) is unsatisfiable
 which means KB entails P->R
this is a proof of entailment, and the various resolutions are the steps of the proof
the exact order in which clauses are resolved could result in shorter or longer proofs, and in
practice you usually want short proofs, and so heuristic would be needed to help make
decisions
Propositional Logic based Agent:

Throughout the last few decades, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has experienced
significant advancement. Scientists and researchers are developing a variety of AI models to
mimic human intelligence as a result of advances in technology and computer science. The
agent based on propositional logic is one of the foundational AI techniques. This article will
examine the definition, operation, and numerous uses of a propositional logic-based agent.

What is Propositional Logic?

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A subset of mathematical logic known as propositional logic deals with propositions, which
are statements that can either be true or wrong. Sentential logic or statement logic are other
names for it. The symbols P, Q, R, and other symbols are used in propositional logic to express
propositions. Compound propositions, which are composed of one or more separate
propositions, are created using these symbols. Moreover, to link propositions, propositional
logic makes use of logical connectives like "and," "or," "not," "implies," and "if and only if."

What is a Propositional Logic-based Agent?

An AI agent that utilises propositional logic to express its knowledge and make decisions is
known as a propositional logic-based agent. A straightforward form of agent, it decides what
to do depending on what it knows about the outside world. A knowledge base, which is made
up of a collection of logical phrases or sentences, serves as a representation of the propositional
logic-based agent's knowledge.

The agent's knowledge is empty, however as it observes the outside world, it fills it with fresh
data. To decide what actions to do in response to the environment, the agent uses its knowledge
base. Depending on the logical inference it makes on its knowledge base, the agent takes
judgements.

How does a Propositional Logic-based Agent work?

A propositional logic-based agent functions by expressing its understanding of the outside

world as logical statements. The knowledge base is initially empty, but as the agent explores
the environment, it fills it with fresh data. The agent draws new knowledge from its knowledge
base through logical inference. Deductive or inductive reasoning can be used to draw a
conclusion.

Deductive inference is the process of inferring new information using logical principles from
already known information. The process of generalizing from specific data to arrive at a
broader conclusion is known as inductive inference. Based on the objectives it seeks to attain,
the agent decides what course of action to take.

Perception, reasoning, and action are the three stages of the agent's decision-making process.
Observing the surroundings and updating the information base are steps in the perception
process. In order to generate new information, the reasoning stage requires using logical
inference to the knowledge base. The action phase entails choosing an action based on the
information that was gathered and the agent's objectives.

Applications of Propositional Logic-based Agents

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In the field of AI, propositional logic-based agents have several uses. Expert system
applications are one of the most popular uses. Expert systems are artificial intelligence
programs created to address difficulties in a particular field. They represent their subject
knowledge in a knowledge base, and they draw new information from the knowledge base
using a reasoning engine.

In the area of natural language processing, propositional logic-based agents are also used
(NLP). The area of AI known as NLP deals with how computers and human languages interact.
The meaning of natural language phrases can be represented by and new information can be
derived from them using propositional logic-based agents.

Knowledge Representation

Propositional logic-based agents' core feature is knowledge representation. A collection of

logical clauses that represent the agent's knowledge of the outside world make up the
knowledge base of the agent. Depending on how much knowledge the agent has about the
outside world, the knowledge base may be either complete or lacking. The agent's capacity to
make informed decisions is impacted by the knowledge base's completeness.

The fact that propositional logic offers a straightforward and understandable method of
conveying knowledge is one of its benefits. Propositional logic uses simple to comprehend
logical symbols and logical connectives to depict relationships between propositions.

Logical Inference

The technique of inferring new knowledge from knowledge already known is known as logical
inference. Propositional logic-based agents should have logical inference because it enables
the agent to reason regarding the external world and gather new knowledge that can be applied
to decision-making. Deductive inference as well as inductive inference are the two different
categories of logical inference.

By using logical principles, deductive inference is the act of obtaining new knowledge based
on previously data obtained. It is predicated on the idea that if an argument's premises are true,
then it follows that the argument's conclusion must also be true. Propositional logic-based
agents draw new knowledge from the body of knowledge through deductive inference.

Decision Making

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A crucial function of propositional logic-based agents is decision-making. The agent bases its
decisions on knowledge of the outside world and its desired outcomes. Three steps make up
the decision-making process: perception, justification, and execution.

Observing the environment and updating the agent's knowledge base is the process of
perception. Using logical inference to extract new information from the knowledge base is the
process of reasoning. Action is the process of choosing a course of action based on the
knowledge that has been obtained and the agent's goals.

Making judgements in a transparent and understandable manner is one of the advantages of

employing propositional logic-based agents for decision making. It is simpler to trust the
agent's conclusions since the logical rules it uses to decide are simple enough for humans to
understand.

Limitations

Although agents based on propositional logic offer numerous benefits, they also have certain
drawbacks. One of the drawbacks is that they lack expressiveness and are unable to depict
intricate interactions between propositions. They are unable to depict, for instance, causal or
temporal links between assertions.

Another drawback is that propositional logic-based agents are unable to deal with uncertainty
or inadequate data. As a result, they are unable to handle circumstances in which there is a lack
of information or uncertainty regarding the environment.

Fuzzy logic, Bayesian networks, and neural networks, among other forms of AI models, have
been developed to get around these restrictions. These models offer a more powerful and
expressive means of describing knowledge and making judgements.

First-Order Logic in Artificial intelligence

In the topic of Propositional logic, we have seen that how to represent statements using
propositional logic. But unfortunately, in propositional logic, we can only represent the facts,
which are either true or false. PL is not sufficient to represent the complex sentences or natural
language statements. The propositional logic has very limited expressive power. Consider the
following sentence, which we cannot represent using PL logic.

o Some humans are intelligent", or

o "Sachin likes cricket."

To represent the above statements, PL logic is not sufficient, so we required some more
powerful logic, such as first-order logic.
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First-Order logic:

o First-order logic is another way of knowledge representation in artificial intelligence.

It is an extension to propositional logic.
o FOL is sufficiently expressive to represent the natural language statements in a concise
way.
o First-order logic is also known as Predicate logic or First-order predicate logic. First-
order logic is a powerful language that develops information about the objects in a more
easy way and can also express the relationship between those objects.
o First-order logic (like natural language) does not only assume that the world contains
facts like propositional logic but also assumes the following things in the world:
o Objects: A, B, people, numbers, colors, wars, theories, squares, pits, wumpus,
o Relations: It can be unary relation such as: red, round, is adjacent, or n-any
relation such as: the sister of, brother of, has color, comes between
o Function: Father of, best friend, third inning of, end of, ......
o As a natural language, first-order logic also has two main parts:
a. Syntax
b. Semantics

Syntax of First-Order logic:

The syntax of FOL determines which collection of symbols is a logical expression in first-order
logic. The basic syntactic elements of first-order logic are symbols. We write statements in
short-hand notation in FOL.

Basic Elements of First-order logic:

Constant 1, 2, A, John, Mumbai, cat,....

Variables x, y, z, a, b,....

Predicates Brother, Father, >,....

Function sqrt, LeftLegOf, ....

Connectives ∧, ∨, ¬, ⇒, ⇔

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Following are the

Equality ==
basic elements of
FOL syntax:
Quantifier ∀, ∃

Atomic sentences:
o Atomic sentences are the most basic sentences of first-order logic. These sentences are
formed from a predicate symbol followed by a parenthesis with a sequence of terms.
o We can represent atomic sentences as Predicate (term1, term2, ......, term n).

Example: Ravi and Ajay are brothers: => Brothers(Ravi, Ajay).

Chinky is a cat: => cat (Chinky).

Complex Sentences:

o Complex sentences are made by combining atomic sentences using connectives.

First-order logic statements can be divided into two parts:

o Subject: Subject is the main part of the statement.

o Predicate: A predicate can be defined as a relation, which binds two atoms together in
a statement.

Consider the statement: "x is an integer.", it consists of two parts, the first part x is the
subject of the statement and second part "is an integer," is known as a predicate.

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Quantifiers in First-order logic:

o A quantifier is a language element which generates quantification, and quantification

specifies the quantity of specimen in the universe of discourse.
o These are the symbols that permit to determine or identify the range and scope of the
variable in the logical expression. There are two types of quantifier:
a. Universal Quantifier, (for all, everyone, everything)
b. Existential quantifier, (for some, at least one).

Universal Quantifier:

Universal quantifier is a symbol of logical representation, which specifies that the statement
within its range is true for everything or every instance of a particular thing.

The Universal quantifier is represented by a symbol ∀, which resembles an inverted A.

Note: In universal quantifier we use implication "→".

If x is a variable, then ∀x is read as:

o For all x
o For each x
o For every x.

Example:

All man drink coffee.

Let a variable x which refers to a man so all x can be represented in UOD as below:

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∀x man(x) → drink (x, coffee).

It will be read as: There are all x where x is a man who drink coffee.

Existential Quantifier:

Existential quantifiers are the type of quantifiers, which express that the statement within its
scope is true for at least one instance of something.

It is denoted by the logical operator ∃, which resembles as inverted E. When it is used with a
predicate variable then it is called as an existential quantifier.

Note: In Existential quantifier we always use AND or Conjunction symbol (∧).

If x is a variable, then existential quantifier will be ∃x or ∃(x). And it will be read as:

o There exists a 'x.'

o For some 'x.'
o For at least one 'x.'

Example:

Some boys are intelligent.

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∃x: boys(x) ∧ intelligent(x)

It will be read as: There are some x where x is a boy who is intelligent.

Points to remember:

o The main connective for universal quantifier ∀ is implication →.

o The main connective for existential quantifier ∃ is and ∧.

Properties of Quantifiers:

o In universal quantifier, ∀x∀y is similar to ∀y∀x.

o In Existential quantifier, ∃x∃y is similar to ∃y∃x.
o ∃x∀y is not similar to ∀y∃x.

Some Examples of FOL using quantifier:

1.All birds fly.

In this question the predicate is "fly(bird)."
And since there are all birds who fly so it will be represented as follows.
∀x bird(x) →fly(x).

2.Every man respects his parent.

In this question, the predicate is "respect(x, y)," where x=man, and y= parent.
Since there is every man so will use ∀, and it will be represented as follows:
∀x man(x) → respects (x, parent).

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3.Some boys play cricket.

In this question, the predicate is "play(x, y)," where x= boys, and y= game. Since there are
some boys so we will use ∃, and it will be represented as:
∃x boys(x) → play(x, cricket).

4.Not all students like both Mathematics and Science.

In this question, the predicate is "like(x, y)," where x= student, and y= subject.
Since there are not all students, so we will use ∀ with negation, so following representation
for this:
¬∀ (x) [ student(x) → like(x, Mathematics) ∧ like(x, Science)].

5.Only one student failed in Mathematics.

In this question, the predicate is "failed(x, y)," where x= student, and y= subject.
Since there is only one student who failed in Mathematics, so we will use following
representation for this:
∃(x) [ student(x) → failed (x, Mathematics) ∧∀ (y) [¬(x==y) ∧ student(y) → ¬failed
(x, Mathematics)].

Free and Bound Variables:

The quantifiers interact with variables which appear in a suitable way. There are two types of
variables in First-order logic which are given below:

Free Variable: A variable is said to be a free variable in a formula if it occurs outside the scope
of the quantifier.

Example: ∀x ∃(y)[P (x, y, z)], where z is a free variable.

Bound Variable: A variable is said to be a bound variable in a formula if it occurs within the
scope of the quantifier.

Example: ∀x [A (x) B( y)], here x and y are the bound variables.

Inference Engine:
Inference Engine is a component of the expert system that applies logical rules to the
knowledge base to deduce new information. It interprets and evaluates the facts in the
knowledge base in order to provide an answer.
A knowledgebase is a structured collection of facts about the system’s domain.
Forward Chaining:
Forward Chaining the Inference Engine goes through all the facts, conditions and derivations
before deducing the outcome i.e When based on available data a decision is taken then the
process is called as Forwarding chaining, It works from an initial state and reaches to the
goal(final decision).
Example:
A
A -> B
B
He is running.

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If he is running, he sweats.
He is sweating.
Backward Chaining:
In this, the inference system knows the final decision or goal, this system starts from the
goal and works backwards to determine what facts must be asserted so that the goal can be
achieved, i.e it works from goal(final decision) and reaches the initial state.
Example:
B
A -> B
A
—————————–
He is sweating.
If he is running, he sweats.
He is running.
Difference between Forwarding Chaining and Backward Chaining:

Forward chaining Backward chaining

When based on available data a decision Backward chaining starts from the goal and works
is taken then the process is called as backward to determine what facts must be asserted
Forward chaining. so that the goal can be achieved.

Forward chaining is known as data- Backward chaining is known as goal-driven

driven technique because we reaches to technique because we start from the goal and
the goal using the available data. reaches the initial state in order to extract the facts.

It is a bottom-up approach. It is a top-down approach.

It applies the Breadth-First Strategy. It applies the Depth-First Strategy.

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Its goal is to get the possible facts or the required

Its goal is to get the conclusion.
data.

Slow as it has to use all the rules. Fast as it has to use only a few rules.

It operates in forward direction i.e it It operates in backward direction i.e it works from
works from initial state to final decision. goal to reach initial state.

Forward chaining is used for the It is used in automated inference engines, theorem
planning, monitoring, control, and proofs, proof assistants and other artificial
interpretation application. intelligence applications.

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