Harnessing the Power of Knowledge Graphs for AI – Part 2
In Part 2 of our series on Knowledge graphs for AI, we discuss how these powerful tools are transforming industries, especially those grappling with vast amounts of complex data, like energy, chemicals, and infrastructure.
The discussion kicks off by highlighting a common challenge for field engineers: the sheer difficulty of gathering comprehensive information about a single asset, like a flange connection. Historically, this has been a “laborious task,” often involving sifting through mountains of paper manuals, retyping information, and manually linking disparate systems. This complexity has often slowed down digitalization in these industries compared to manufacturing.
Bill Hahn points out the immense scale of data, particularly in areas like upstream oil and gas, where geological databases can contain billions of data nodes. This is where RapidMiner steps in, with knowledge graphs offering a revolutionary approach:
- Handling Massive Data: RapidMiner is designed to manage tens to hundreds of billions of data nodes, performing complex queries in seconds or minutes, not days. This speed is achieved through in-memory processing and optimized relationships.
- Virtual Integration: Instead of painstakingly migrating all data into a single, massive data lake, knowledge graphs create a “virtual web of relationships” across existing data sources. This means data stays where it is, but its connections are made intelligently in memory.
- Empowering AI: Ben Secondly explains that knowledge graphs provide the “dense, information-rich context” that AI agents and large language models (LLMs) crave. This ensures that AI responses are more accurate and reliable, reducing the “hallucinations” that can occur when LLMs guess relationships in uncontextualized data. It’s like giving AI a super-smart librarian for all your company’s information!
A key clarification is that knowledge graphs don’t replace existing system integrations. Instead they are complementary.
Existing integration tools can be used to “surface” data into the knowledge graph’s ontology, creating a higher-level data integration plane. This means companies can leverage their prior investments while gaining new, powerful capabilities.
An instructive analogy can be used here: browsing a webpage. When you visit a website, your browser brings a version of that data into memory. You’re not downloading the entire web server! Similarly, a knowledge graph pulls a view of data from systems like ERP or PLM into memory, allowing you to ask questions and run reports without migrating the entire database. You can “refresh” this view to get the latest information.
Perhaps the most exciting takeaway is the promise of rapid time-to-value. Practically speaking, organizations can start seeing value from RapidMiner in weeks. This is a dramatic shift from the “months or years” timelines often associated with large-scale data projects. The flexibility of the ontology means you don’t need new development cycles for every new question, accelerating insights and decision-making.
John Nixon
John has worked in energy and utilities for 29+ years, creating multiple energy and technology start-ups leading business development in China, Romania, Panama and the USA. John has also led large greenfield and brownfield projects with oil and mining supermajors in Canada and China, and spearheaded pipeline asset integrity programs in USA and Mexico.
Ben Szekely
Ben is an experienced leader in enterprise product development and positioning, enterprise sales and client delivery in the modern data management software space. He runs the go to market for data and AI at Altair (now part of Siemens).
Bill Hahn
Bill is the director of solutions consulting at Siemens Digital Industries Software, covering several of our industries, including energy, chemicals, infrastructure, consumer product goods, as well as life sciences. He leverages extensive industry experience in digital strategy development, systems engineering, and business process optimization to drive efficiency and growth. Bil’s expertise includes end-to-end software development and implementation, aligning technology solutions with business objectives, and implementing risk management frameworks to ensure compliance and operational resilience.
