Interim Virtual AI Taxonomy Meeting, 23 Aug 2022

An interim virtual meeting was convened on 23 August 2022 to resume the discussion of AI vocabularies, taxonomies, and/or ontologies. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 PDT and ended promptly at 10:30 PDT.

Attendees

Claude Baudoin (cébé IT & Knowledge Management), co-chairDr. Karl Gosejacob (GOSEJACOB)Andy Holmes-Evans (BAE Systems)Sridhar Iyengar (IBM), part of the timeElisa Kendall (Thematix Partners)Dr. Nick Stavros (Jackrabbit Consulting)Bobbin Teegarden (OntoAge), co-chair, part of the timeBassam Zarkout (IGnPower Inc.), part of the time

Taxonomy in Wiki

Nick Stavros presented his work to organize the taxonomy, including terms inherited from the IEEE Standards Association's P3123 project (AI Vocabulary and Formats), using the OMG wiki platform. Note that access to the private pages requires a login ID, which is not based on the normal OMG credentials; Nick can generate credentials for whomever wants them. He demonstrated how the wiki captures the hierarchy, multiple definitions if needed, notes, references, a change log, and to-do lists. He mentioned that the wiki lends itself to the production of a PDF, since standards organizations typically like a printable output.

Elisa Kendall asked how difficult it would be to export the content in RDF, MVF or OWL formats. There was some discussion of the coding needed to do that. Elisa mentioned the work from Tom Baker to convert the Dublin Core ontology to RDF (more details here).

Claude noted that he has a number of to-do's he needs to attend to.

MVF

Elisa gave a thorough presentation on the motivation and development of OMG's Multiple Vocabulary Facility (MVF). Her slides were a subset of an MVF submission presentation given to the Analysis & Design Task Force in June 2022. The work is rooted in the experience of developing vocabularies for a number of banks in Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, as well as an institution in St. Petersburg, Russia). Eventually, after discovering that some of the work done in the Financial Instruments Business Ontology (FIBO) and the Languages, Countries and Codes (LCC) specifications was being duplicated, the work was split into two specifications, MVF proper and the Commons Ontology Library. Elisa showed the MVF metamodel, pointing out hat is fairly small.

There is a mapping between MVF and SKOS-XL (Simple Knowledge Organization System eXtension for Labels).

Indefinite AI Terms

Karl Gosejacob presented the status of a discussion within the German Federation of Industries (BDI) about European Commission work on regulating AI products. There is an attempt to make the definition of AI less broad, but there are still issues about the use of “indefinite legal terms.” Karl thinks this presents an opportunity for OMG, perhaps as an RFI or RFP. Karl's document is just two slides in addition to the title one, and is OMG document ai/22-08-01.

IIC Industrial AI Task Group

Bassam Zarkout briefly mentioned his interest in our work as a participant in the Industry IoT Consortium's (IIC) Industrial AI Task Group, and as chair of the Digital Transformation Enabler (DXE) group, where AI/ML are identified as one of the enablers. Claude pointed out that Bassam will give a presentation during the regular meeting of the AI PTF on 20 Sep 2022 at 9:15 a.m. PDT.

A white paper about AI as a DX enabler has been written. We should post a link to it in the OMG document repository. You may also look at the IIC's Industrial AI Framework. Since IIC is not a standards development organization (SDO) but OMG is, a legitimate question is whether the AI PTF could be the vehicle to transform the IIC's framework into a standard.

Other Discussions

Andy Holmes-Evans said he appreciated the presentations and discussions, and mentioned that there are significnt challenges related to AI in his industry.

Sridhar Iyengar, having joined late, had not seen Nick Stavros' presentation. He asked to have access to the private wiki area of the taxonomy. He also mentioned work done at IBM on a web-based catalog of terms. Claude asked whether someone from IBM could present about this on Sep. 20.

Claude suggested to Elisa that a discussion on vocabulary/taxonomy representations, including Nicks work, 'MVF, SKOS-XL, etc., could usefully take place during the Ontology PSIG meeting on Sep. 22. There was a tentative agreement to schedule this from 10:30 to 12:00 PDT after the morning break. We might also be able to get the IIC Vocabulary Task Group chair, Erin Bournival (Dell) to join as she will be in Burlingame to attend the IIC quarterly meeting.

We all wished Bobbin Teegarden a prompt and complete recovery from COVID.

Everyone who will attend the Q3 meeting in Burlingame was reminded to be extra-careful since the virus(es) are still rampant and many people got sick while attending the Q2 meeting in Orlando in June.