Symbiotic Knowledge Graphs: A Vision for Semantic Brain-Computer Interfaces

A primary goal of the Semantic Web was to enable autonomous agents to take up tasks on behalf of humans. Now, 25 years after this initial vision, this goal could be considered partially realized. While these agents can be personal, and associated to specific humans, they are not directly integrated within human cognition. In other words, these intelligent agents are external to the human body and brain, and they require indirect communication through human sensory and motor functions. As such, the Semantic Web vision has set out a course to assist the evolution of human knowledge by creating intelligence in external agents, but the intelligence of individual humans remains untouched, or is even degrading. As such, to avoid human intelligence falling behind on artificial intelligence, there is a need to augment our human intelligence. Thanks to the Semantic Web technology stack, we already have a foundation to make machines understand data, which are often captured in the form of Knowledge Graphs. In this paper, we argue that this stack offer a basis to also make knowledge interoperable across humans and can augment human intelligence through Semantic Brain-Computer Interfaces. We present an interdisciplinary research roadmap for achieving this vision, which spans Augmented Cognition, Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Neuro-symbolic AI. This will enable the existence of Symbiotic Knowledge Graphs, which consist of the integration of human knowledge stored in the brain, and external knowledge stored on the Web. Concretely, we propose a research vision where artificial intelligence and human intelligence can co-evolve in a symbiotic manner, without one replacing the other.

@inproceedings{taelman_iswc_vision_symbioticknowledgegraphs_2026,
  author = {Taelman, Ruben},
  title = {Symbiotic Knowledge Graphs: A Vision for Semantic Brain-Computer Interfaces},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 25th International Semantic Web Conference},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  url = {https://rubensworks.github.io/article-iswc2026-vision-symbiotic-knowledge-graphs/}
}