Knowledge Acquisition and Refinement Tools for the ADVISE Meta-Expert System

Computer systems which can perrorm a task that normally requires a highly-trained human expert are understandably in great demand. Unrortunately, the development or such systems has proven to be difficult. Building an expert system typically requires months (or years) or work by both the human expert who is providing knowledge and the computer scientist (knowledge engineer) attempting to put that knowledge into a computer program. The primary problem lies in the area or knowledge acquisi­ tion and refinement. Computer programs that aid a domain expert in expressing and modifying knowledge would decrease the amount 01 time necessary to build userul expert systems. This thesis describes soltware tools that are the tirst steps along the path to aD integrated knowledge acquisition and refinement system. The research described here is based on tbe beliet that a teacher (i.e., the domain expert) should be provided with several ways to present and modify knowledge.