Interactive Transfer of Expertise

Whereas much early work in artificial intelligence was devoted to the search for a single, powerful, domain-independent problem-solving methodology [e.g., GPS (Newell and Simon, 1972)], subsequent efforts have stressed the use of large stores of domain-specific knowledge as a basis for high performance. The knowledge base for this sort of program [e.g., DENDRAL (Feigenbaum et al., 1971), MACSYMA (Moses, 1971)] is often assembled by hand, an ongoing task that may involve several person-years of effort. A key element in constructing a knowledge base is the transfer of expertise from a human expert to the program. Since the domain expert often knows nothing about programming, the interaction between the expert and the pertormance program usually requires the mediation of a human programmer. We have sought to create a program that could supply much the same sort of assistance as that provided by the programmer in this transfer of expertise. The result is a system called TEIRESIAS 1 ...