AIML <-> OWL ??

Since I posted my original query to the pandorabots-general list in July, I'm beginning to understand the concepts involved a little better, thanks also to replies from this group and others, such as the protege-owl list.

In a comment to my recent blog entry ("I'm dreaming of RSS in => AIML out"), Jean-Claude Morand has mentioned that RSS 1.0 would probably be more conducive to conversion into RDF or AIML than RSS 2.0. He also mentioned that the Dublin Core metadata standard may eventually overtake RSS in primacy....

So, can XSL transforms really be used to translate between RSS and RDF, and between RDF and AIML?? My understanding at this point is that talking about AIML and OWL is a bit like apples and oranges.... Apparently the output from an OWL Reasoner would be in RDF? I have by now discovered the Robitron group and am finding that archive to be a rich resource....

What does this have to do with Pandorabots? I would like to address a brief question, in particular to Dr. Wallace... what do you see as the impediments to upgrading the Pandorabots service to include an OWL Reasoner (or in chaining it to another service that would provide the same function)? Surely you've considered this.... Where are the bottlenecks (other than time and money of course)? Is it an unreasonable expectation to be able to upload OWL ontologies much the same as we can upload AIML knowledgebases today?

As I have mentioned previously, one of my interests is creating knowledgebases on the fly using taxonomies. My belief is that quick and dirty knowledgebases are a more productive focus than pouring time and energy into trying to meet the requirements of the Turing test (another rant for another day....) Certainly with chatbots there is a substantial element of smoke and mirrors involved in any case.... One can always go back and refine as needed based on actual chat logs.

The next step for me will be to try and convert my most recent book, VAGABOND GLOBETROTTING 3, into a VagaBot.... I would like to hear from anyone with experience in converting books into AIML knowledgebases! My supposition is that a *good* book index is in effect a "taxonomy" of that book.... My guess is that I can use the index entries as patterns, and their referring sections as templates... to create at least the core of a knowledgebase. If more detail is needed then a concordance can always be applied to the book.

After that I hope to tackle creating quick and dirty AIML knowledgebases on the fly from RSS feed title and description fields... not in pursuit of the chimera of the Turing test, but simply to build a better bot. (Now, I wonder if anyone has ever created RSS from a book?!? ;^))