Second generation expert system explanation

Explanation has long been cited as one of the key advantages of the expert system methodology. Most current approaches to expert system explanation view explanation as an “add-on” to the expert system’s domain problem solving. This is in direct conflict with findings on human explanation. For humans, explanation is a complex problem-solving process of reconstructing an explanation based on a partial memory of the problem-solving episodes. Further, this process of explanation is at the same level as the original domain problem solving; working on the current state to reconstruct a plausible explanation. Recently, a new direction has emerged in expert systems, namely the study of second generation expert systems. These new expert systems view domain problem solving as an interaction and combination of several explicit reasoning processes or representations (i.e., causal, heuristic, planning). This chapter discusses two related projects that investigate the natural role of explanation in such second generation expert systems.

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