The SILK Project: Semantic Inferencing on Large Knowledge

This is the project home page for the Semantic Inferencing on Large Knowledge (SILK) knowledge representation system.

SILK is sponsored by Vulcan Inc.

SILK is the newest part of Vulcan Inc.'s Project Halo, which includes also:

• AURA, a system for knowledge base authoring and question-answering in college level science
• SMW+, the Halo extension of Semantic MediaWiki, a system for semantic wikis that extends the software that Wikipedia runs on

SILK presentations:

• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Semantic Web Rules: Fundamentals, Applications, and Standards (abstract), Tutorial, 27th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-13), Bellevue, Washington, July 2013.
• Benjamin Grosof, Paul Haley, Acquiring Rich Logical Knowledge from Text (abstract), Semantic Technology and Business Conference (SemTech 2013), San Francisco, California, June 2013.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Semantic Web Rules: Fundamentals, Applications, and Standards (abstract), Tutorial, 11th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2012), Boston, Massachusetts, November 2012.
• Benjamin Grosof, SILK: Knowledge Representation for Project Halo (abstract), Invited Presentation, Logic Programming: Systems and Applications (held in honor of David S. Warren's retirement), Stony Brook, New York, September 2012.
• Benjamin Grosof, Recent Advances in the SILK Knowledge Representation and its Usage (abstract), Invited Presentation, 5th International Symposium on Rules: Research Based and Industry Focused (RuleML 2011), Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, November 2011.
• David Gunning, HaloBook and Progress Towards Digital Aristotle, Invited Talk, 23rd Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-11), San Francisco, California, August 2011. N.B.: This talk is only fractionally about SILK.
• Carl Andersen, SILK: Efficiently Building Systems with Complex Behaviors and Varieties, 3rd Annual DoD SOA & Semantic Technology Symposium, Springfield, Virginia, July 2011.
• Benjamin Grosof, SILK's Expressive Semantic Web Rules and Challenges in Natural Language Processing (abstract), AI/NLP seminar, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, May 2011.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Web Rules: Fundamentals, Standards, and Applications (abstract), Tutorial, 9th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2010), Shanghai, China, November 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, SILK: Rules, Semantic Web, and Databases Take a Leap in Scalable Logical Power (abstract), Semantic Web Meetup, Seattle, Washington, September 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Rules on the Semantic Web: Advances in Knowledge Representation and Standards (abstract), Tutorial, 24th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10), Atlanta, Georgia, July 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, The SILK 2 System and RIF Dialect: Semantic Rules Grow Up (flyer), Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech 2010), San Francisco, California, June 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Semantic Rules on the Web (flyer), Tutorial, 8th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009), Chantilly, Virginia, October 2009.
• Benjamin Grosof, SILK: Higher Level Rules with Defaults and Semantic Scalability (flyer), Invited Talk, Third International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems (RR 2009), Chantilly, Virginia, October 2009.
• Benjamin Grosof, Hyper Logic Programs in SILK For Business and Science: An Overview (flyer), Commercial Users of Logic Programming (CULP), Pasadena, California, July 2009.
• Hui Wan, Benjamin Grosof, Michael Kifer, Paul Fodor, Senlin Liang, Logic Programming with Defaults and Argumentation Theories (flyer), 25th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2009), Pasadena, California, July 2009.
• Benjamin Grosof, SILK: Semantic Rules Take the Next Big Step in Power (abstract, flyer), Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech 2009), San Jose, California, June 2009. The current recommended overview of SILK.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Rules on the Web (abstract), Tutorial, 18th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2009), Madrid, Spain, April 2009.
• Benjamin Grosof, Hyper Logic Programs in SILK: Redefining the KR Playing Field for Business and VLKB (abstract), Invited Keynote, International RuleML Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications (RuleML-2008), Orlando, Florida, October 2008.

SILK papers:

• Benjamin Grosof, Terrance Swift, Radial Restraint: A Semantically Clean Approach to Bounded Rationality for Logic Programs, 27th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-13), Bellevue, Washington, July 2013.
• Paul Fodor, Michael Kifer, Transaction Logic with Defaults and Argumentation Theories (long version, slides), 27th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2011), Lexington, Kentucky, USA, July 2011.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mark Burstein, Mike Dean, Carl Andersen, Brett Benyo, William Ferguson, Daniela Inclezan, Richard Shapiro, A SILK Graphical UI for Defeasible Reasoning, with a Biology Causal Process Example (slides, flyer) Poster and Demonstration, 9th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2010), Shanghai, China, November 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, Carl Andersen, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, Omni-directional Hyper Logic Programs in SILK and RIF (slides), RuleML 2010 Challenge, 4th International Web Rule Symposium (RuleML 2010), Alexandria, Virginia, October 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mark Burstein, Mike Dean, Carl Andersen, Brett Benyo, William Ferguson, Daniela Inclezan, Richard Shapiro, A SILK Graphical UI for Defeasible Reasoning, with a Biology Causal Process Example, RuleML 2010 Challenge, 4th International Web Rule Symposium (RuleML 2010), Alexandria, Virginia, October 2010.
• Hui Wan, Michael Kifer, Benjamin Grosof, Defeasibility in Answer Set Programs via Argumentation Theories (slides), 4th International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems (RR 2010), Bressanone/Brixen, Italy, September 2010.
• Senlin Liang, Michael Kifer, Deriving Predicate Statistics in Datalog (slides), 12th International ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming (PPDP 2010), Hagenberg, Austria, July 2010.
• Paul Fodor, Michael Kifer, Tabling for Transaction Logic (slides), 12th International ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming (PPDP 2010), Hagenberg, Austria, July 2010.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, The SILK System: Scalable Higher-Order Defeasible Rules (slides), International RuleML Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications (RuleML 2009), Las Vegas, Nevada, November 2009. This was the runner-up in Rules Challenge 2009.
• Benjamin Grosof, Mike Dean, Michael Kifer, The SILK System: Scalable and Expressive Semantic Rules (slides), Poster and Demonstration, 8th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009), Chantilly, Virginia, October 2009.
• B. Grosof, Opportunities for Semantic Web knowledge representation to help XBRL (slides), Position Paper, Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web, Arlington, Virginia, October 2009.
• Hui Wan, Benjamin Grosof, Michael Kifer, Paul Fodor, Senlin Liang, Logic Programming with Defaults and Argumentation Theories (slides for 25 minute talk, flyer), 25th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2009), Pasadena, California, July 2009.
• Senlin Liang, Paul Fodor, Hui Wan, Michael Kifer, OpenRuleBench: An Analysis of the Performance of Rule Engines (slides), 18th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2009), Madrid, Spain, April 2009.

• biology (initial version of 7 September 2010)

SILK and the W3C Rule Interchange Format (RIF):

• SILK can import and (with possible loss) export RIF BLD
• RIF Rulelog Dialect
• Rulelog: Syntax and Semantics (html, pdf)
• Older draft RIF SILK specification
• Comments on RIF

To receive occasional announcements about SILK, subscribe to the very low volume silk-announce@semwebcentral.org email list (archives).