TY - JOUR AU - Uschold, Michael PY - 2003/09/15 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Where Are the Semantics in the Semantic Web? JF - AI Magazine JA - AIMag VL - 24 IS - 3 SE - Articles DO - 10.1609/aimag.v24i3.1716 UR - https://ojs.aaai.org/aimagazine/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1716 SP - 25 AB - The most widely accepted defining feature of the semantic web is machine-usable content. By this definition, the semantic web is already manifest in shopping agents that automatically access and use web content to find the lowest air fares or book prices. However, where are the semantics? Most people regard the semantic web as a vision, not a reality -- so shopping agents should not "count." To use web content, machines need to know what to do when they encounter it, which, in turn, requires the machine to know what the content means (that is, its semantics). The challenge of developing the semantic web is how to put this knowledge into the machine. The manner in which it is done is at the heart of the confusion about the semantic web. The goal of this article is to clear up some of this confusion. I explain that shopping agents work in the complete absence of any explicit account of the semantics of web content because the meaning of the web content that the agents are expected to encounter can be determined by the human programmers who hardwire it into the web application software. I therefore regard shopping agents as a degenerate case of the semantic web. I note various shortcomings of this approach. I conclude by presenting some ideas about how the semantic web will likely evolve. ER -