Knowledge Acquisition from Multiple Experts

Expert system projects arc often based on collaboration with a single domain expert. This article is based on work performed in collaboration with many other colleagues and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their influence on the ideas plescnted here The MDX pro,ject was a collahorat,ion between the first ant,hor, B Chandrasekaran, and J W Smith at Ohio State Solnc of the key people in the DARN project were Daniel Bohrow, Johann dcKlcer, and Mark Stefik at Xerox PARC and Milt Mallory and Ron Brown at Xerox OSD. The approach described here is an empirical one based on our experience with different expert, systems. Anecdotes from various prqjects illustrate the issues. Judging the Suitability of an Expert Systems Task Before cvcn bcginuing to build an expert, system, you must decide if the domain is suitable, given the current statcof-the-art of both the t,cchnology of knowledge eugineering and the art, of acquiring knowledge.