Expert knowledge acquisition and the unwilling expert: a knowledge engineering perspective

Expert systems are an evolving technology with the potential to make human expertise widely and cheaply available. The literature describing the development of expert systems generally assumes that experts willingly give up their knowledge. This is unrealistic and may be a reason why most expert system projects fail. This paper explores the problem of unwilling experts from the perspective of a knowledge engineer building an expert system. The link between knowledge and organizational power is established and human motivation theories are discussed. Finally, a new motivational approach is introduced to help the knowledge engineer deal with unwilling experts.