An Ontological Foundation for the Verification and Validation of Complex Systems in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
摘要
Verification and Validation (V&V) of complex systems is a resource-intensive set of processes constrained by the socio-technical systems enterprises use to implement them. Both integrated and socio-technical system complexity increases with the inclusion of capable but potentially untrustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, leading to additional miscommunications during V&V process execution. Symbolic AI offers a promising alternative to subsymbolic AI in that symbolic AI can make explainable decisions if built upon an ontological knowledge base written using first-order logic (FOL). The Unified Ontologies Suite (UOS) constitutes such a knowledge base as a set of FOL ontologies that define terms based on mathematical rules instead of human-oriented definitions. A philosophical foundation for systems engineering theory concerning V&V process execution is provided herein to serve as the basis for UOS rule definition.