Knowledge Engineers Rock: Keith Corbett

In this episode, I sit down with Keith Corbett to talk about the past, present, and future of AI—from the early days of GOFAI to today’s knowledge graph–driven systems.

Keith shares his journey from working at Lisp Machines Inc and Interleaf, where he supported customers building rule-based systems and early chatbots, through the AI Winter, and into the modern era of semantic technologies. Since 2015, he’s focused on OWL/RDF, knowledge graphs, and semantic layers, helping organizations build more structured, meaningful AI systems.

We also dive into what it means to become an ontologist, how to think about ontology as a discipline, and Keith’s experience leading cohorts in the KGC Learning Program. If you're interested in knowledge graphs, AI architecture, or breaking into ontology work, this conversation is packed with insight.

Topics include:

• The evolution from GOFAI to modern AI
• Knowledge representation and semantic layers
• What ontologists actually do
• Teaching and learning in the KGC program
• Building AI systems grounded in knowledge graphs