Instantly Deployable Expert Knowledge - Networks of Knowledge Engines
This work addresses the problem of inefficient knowledge utilization for society and economy by envisioning a systemic approach to automate and scale expert knowledge application, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing technological concepts.
The paper tackles the limitation of human capacity to manually apply expert knowledge by proposing a socio-technical framework that transforms expert knowledge into automated algorithms (knowledge engines) and executable compositions (networks of knowledge engines) to instantly deploy knowledge for individual challenges, aiming to enable scalable knowledge deployment without requiring expert competences.
Knowledge and information are becoming the primary resources of the emerging information society. To exploit the potential of available expert knowledge, comprehension and application skills (i.e. expert competences) are necessary. The ability to acquire these skills is limited for any individual human. Consequently, the capacities to solve problems based on human knowledge in a manual (i.e. mental) way are strongly limited. We envision a new systemic approach to enable scalable knowledge deployment without expert competences. Eventually, the system is meant to instantly deploy humanity's total knowledge in full depth for every individual challenge. To this end, we propose a socio-technical framework that transforms expert knowledge into a solution creation system. Knowledge is represented by automated algorithms (knowledge engines). Executable compositions of knowledge engines (networks of knowledge engines) generate requested individual information at runtime. We outline how these knowledge representations could yield legal, ethical and social challenges and nurture new business and remuneration models on knowledge. We identify major technological and economic concepts that are already pushing the boundaries in knowledge utilisation: e.g. in artificial intelligence, knowledge bases, ontologies, advanced search tools, automation of knowledge work, the API economy. We indicate impacts on society, economy and labour. Existing developments are linked, including a specific use case in engineering design.