Knowledge Bases and Language Models: Complementing Forces.

Large language models (LLMs), as a particular instance of generative artificial intelligence, have revolutionized natural language processing. In this invited paper, we argue that LLMs are complementary to structured data repositories such as databases or knowledge bases, which use symbolic knowledge representations. Hence, the two ways of knowledge representation will likely continue to co-exist, at least in the near future. We discuss ways that have been explored to make the two approaches work together, and point out opportunities and challenges for their symbiosis.