Interactive transfer of expertise: acquisition of new inference rules

TEIRESIAS is a program designed to function as an assistant in the task of building large, knowledge-based systems. It embodies a particular model of interactive transfer of knowledge from a human expert to the system, and makes possible knowledge transfer in a high level dialog conducted in a restricted subset of natural language. This paper explores an example of TEIRESIAS in operation, and demonstrates how it guides the acquisition of new inference rules. The concept of meta-level Knowledge is described, and an illustration given of its utility and contribution to the creation of intelligent programs. This work was supported in part by the Bureau of Health Sciences Research and Evaluation of HEW under Grant HS-01544 and by the Advanced Research Projects Agency under ARPA Order 2494. It was carried out on the SUMEX Computer System, supported by the NIH under Grant RR-00785. The views expressed are solely those of the author.