Open-World Assumption

The Open-World Assumption (OWA) is a concept in knowledge representation that assumes information can always be incomplete. Unlike a closed system where everything is known, OWA allows for the possibility that new facts could exist beyond the current knowledge. For instance, if we know "Alice is a musician," we don’t assume Alice is the only musician; other musicians may exist that we haven't mentioned or discovered yet. This perspective is often used in databases and artificial intelligence, enabling systems to accommodate new information as it becomes available without invalidating current knowledge.