When you save a photo of your dog to your phone, the computer stores ones and zeros. It has no idea what a golden retriever is. Teaching machines to actually understand the world — not just file data about it — is arguably the defining challenge of artificial intelligence, and this episode explains how researchers have been tackling it for decades.

We take a deep dive into knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR), the branch of AI concerned with encoding real-world knowledge in formats that machines can manipulate, query, and reason about. This isn't the flashy side of AI that generates headlines about chatbots and image generators. It's the foundational plumbing that determines whether an AI system can actually comprehend the difference between a bank that holds money and a bank along a river.

We cover the major app ...