Knowledge Acquisition Advisor (KA): An interactive knowledge-acquisition tool for expert system development

A new interactive knowledge acquisition tool, called Knowledge Acquisition Advisor (KA²), is presented in this paper. The new tool will help knowledge engineers to conduct effective knowledge-elicitation interviews with domain experts through structured knowledge acquisition for both analytic and synthetic problems. A graphic modeling data structure, called Knowledge Graph is proposed, which allows knowledge engineers to model domain problems with their images and understanding. By using Knowledge Graph, knowledge engineers are able to decompose a domain problem into several components, to model the feature of each component, and to explore their relations by linking them with sets of questions. These questions can later be employed to guide the KA interview. Moreover, KA² is particularly useful for interview through computer networks, so the knowledge acquisition can take place remotely.     

Knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation with class: the object-oriented paradigm

Knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation are the fundamental building blocks of knowledge-based systems (KBSs). How to efficiently elicit knowledge from experts and transform this elicited knowledge into a machine usable format is a significant and time consuming problem for KBS developers. Object-orientation provides several solutions to persistent knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation problems including transportability, knowledge reuse, and knowledge growth. An automated graphical knowledge acquisition tool is presented, based upon object-oriented principles. The object-oriented graphical interface provides a modeling platform that is easily understood by experts and knowledge engineers. The object-oriented base for the automated KA tool provides a representation independent methodology that can easily be mapped into any other object-oriented expert system or other object-oriented intelligent tools.     

Selection of knowledge acquisition techniques based upon the problem domain characteristics of production and operations management expert systems

The application of expert systems to various problem domains in business has grown steadily since their introduction. Regardless of the chosen method of development, the most commonly cited problems in developing these systems are the unavailability of both the experts and knowledge engineers and difficulties with the process of acquiring knowledge from domain experts. Within the field of artificial intelligence, this has been called the 'knowledge acquisition' problem and has been identified as the greatest bottleneck in the expert system development process. Simply stated, the problem is how to acquire the specific knowledge for a well-defined problem domain efficiently from one or more experts and represent it in the appropriate computer format. Given the 'paradox of expertise', the experts have often proceduralized their knowledge to the point that they have difficulty in explaining exactly what they know and how they know it. However, empirical research in the field of expert systems reveals that certain knowledge acquisition techniques are significantly more efficient than others in helping to extract certain types of knowledge within specific problem domains. In this paper we present a mapping between these empirical studies and a generic taxonomy of expert system problem domains. In so doing, certain knowledge acquisition techniques can be prescribed based on the problem domain characteristics. With the production and operations management (P/OM) field as the pilot area for the current study, we first examine the range of problem domains and suggest a mapping of P/OM tasks to a generic taxonomy of problem domains. We then describe the most prominent knowledge acquisition techniques. Based on the examination of the existing empirical knowledge acquisition research, we present how the empirical work can be used to provide guidance to developers of expert systems in the field of P/OM.     

Knowledge acquisition for expert systems in accounting and financial problem domains

Since the mid-1980s, expert systems have been developed for a variety of problems in accounting and finance. The most commonly cited problems in developing these systems are the unavailability of the experts and knowledge engineers and difficulties with the rule extraction process. Within the field of artificial intelligence, this has been called the ‘knowledge acquisition’ (KA) problem and has been identified as a major bottleneck in the expert system development process. Recent empirical research reveals that certain KA techniques are significantly more efficient than others in helping to extract certain types of knowledge within specific problem domains. This paper presents a mapping between these empirical studies and a generic taxonomy of expert system problem domains. To accomplish this, we first examine the range of problem domains and suggest a mapping of accounting and finance tasks to a generic problem domain taxonomy. We then identify and describe the most prominent KA techniques employed in developing expert systems in accounting and finance. After examining and summarizing the existing empirical KA work, we conclude by showing how the empirical KA research in the various problem domains can be used to provide guidance to developers of expert systems in the fields of accounting and finance.     

基于场景及规则获取模板的知识获取方法

产生式规则作为知识库系统进行推理的常用的、可读性好的知识表示形式,在构建知识库系统时有极大的优越性.提出一种基于场景及规则获取模板的知识获取方法,并以某高分子复合材料的加工专家为知识获取对象.该方法通过分析、记录领域专家进行设计的过程、解决问题的过程和动作,将领域问题按层次细化为一系列子问题,并在子问题场景下结合场景模型及知识获取模板来获取规则性知识.采用该方法可以辅助领域专家在明晰领域知识结构的基础上,逐步挖掘领域中细粒度的规则性知识.     

知识云及其在知识获取中的意义

如何有效地获取领域专家的知识一直被视为人工智能中的难题．本文的目的在于提出一种关于知识获取的基本观点，并以此观点为基础来研究知识获取问题．这个观点的基本内容是：象波尔的原于模型一样，在专家的知识周围有一些知识层．它们是认识和获取专家知识的突破口或入口．本文将这些知识层看成是知识云，同时将上述观点视作知识云假设．我们将讨论知识云的内涵，研究知识云假设的合理性，最后将阐述知识云这一概念在知识获取中的意义．     

PRIMEROSE: PROBABILISTIC RULE INDUCTION METHOD BASED ON ROUGH SETS AND RESAMPLING METHODS

Automated knowledge acquisition is an important research issue in machine learning. Several methods of inductive learning, such as ID3 family and AQ family, have been applied to discover meaningful knowledge from large databases and their usefulness is assured in several aspects. However, since their methods are of a deterministic nature and the reliability of acquired knowledge is not evaluated statistically, these methods are ineffective when applied to domains essentially probabilistic in nature, such as medical domains. Extending concepts of rough set theory to a probabilistic domain, we introduce a new approach to knowledge acquisition, which induces probabilistic rules based on rough set theory (PRIMEROSE) and develop a program that extracts rules for an expert system from a clinical database, using this method. The results show that the derived rules almost correspond to those of the medical experts.     

Automated knowledge acquisition for the surface-mount PWB assembly domain

The development of knowledge-based (or expert) systems for the surface-mount printed wiring board (PWB) assembly domain requires the understanding and regulation of several complex tasks. While the knowledge base in an expert system serves as a storehouse of knowledge primitives, its design and development is a bottleneck in the expert system development life-cycle. Therefore the development of an automated knowledge acquisition (KA) facility (or KA tool) would facilitate the implementation of expert systems for any domain. This paper describes an automated KA tool that helps to elicit and store information in domain-specific knowledge bases for surface-mount PWB assembly. A salient feature of this research is the acquisition of uncertain information.     

An Experimental Evaluation of Integrating Machine Learning with Knowledge Acquisition

Machine learning and knowledge acquisition from experts have distinct capabilities that appear to complement one another. We report a study that demonstrates the integration of these approaches can both improve the accuracy of the developed knowledge base and reduce development time. In addition, we found that users expected the expert systems created through the integrated approach to have higher accuracy than those created without machine learning and rated the integrated approach less difficult to use. They also provided favorable evaluations of both the specific integrated software, a system called The Knowledge Factory, and of the general value of machine learning for knowledge acquisition.     

知识获取研究

知识获取是知识从外部知识源到计算机内部的转换过程,是当前知识工程研究的热点和难点问题之一。该文阐述了知识获取的定义、方法和最终目标,重点介绍了显性知识和隐性知识的获取方法,并分析了这两类方法的优缺点,最后给出了知识获取的困难和一些改进思想。     

Incremental acquisition of search knowledge

The development of highly effective heuristics for search problems is a difficult and time-consuming task. We present a knowledge acquisition approach to incrementally model expert search processes. Though, experts do not normally have complete introspective access to that knowledge, their explanations of actual search considerations seem very valuable in constructing a knowledge-level model of their search processes.Furthermore, for the basis of our knowledge acquisition approach, we substantially extend the work done on Ripple-down rules which allows knowledge acquisition and maintenance without analysis or a knowledge engineer. This extension allows the expert to enter his domain terms during the KA process; thus the expert provides a knowledge-level model of his search process. We call this framework nested ripple-down rules.Our approach targets the implicit representation of the less clearly definable quality criteria by allowing the expert to limit his input to the system to explanations of the steps in the expert search process. These explanations are expressed in our search knowledge interactive language. These explanations are used to construct a knowledge base representing search control knowledge. We are acquiring the knowledge in the context of its use, which substantially supports the knowledge acquisition process. Thus, in this paper, we will show that it is possible to build effective search heuristics efficiently at the knowledge level. We will discuss how our system SmS1.3 (SmS for Smart Searcher) operates at the knowledge level as originally described by Newell. We complement our discussion by employing SmS for the acquisition of expert chess knowledge for performing a highly pruned tree search. These experimental results in the chess domain are evidence for the practicality of our approach.     

Effects of perceptual complexity on older and younger adults’ target acquisition performance

The present study evaluated the effects of the three perceptual complexity factors: number of elements, colour variety, and graphical background clutter level, on older and younger adults’ target acquisition time within a computer display. Experiment 1 manipulated the total number of icons, Experiment 2 manipulated the variety of icon colours, and Experiment 3 manipulated the clutter level of the graphical background on the display. In each experiment, 12 older and 12 younger adults were asked to move a cursor to a target icon on the display as quickly and accurately as possible. Target size and distance to the cursor were also manipulated to yield different difficulties of targets. Target acquisition time and Fitts’ law slope were analysed. Results showed that target acquisition time increased for more difficult targets under all the three complexity factors. The amount of increase was more evident for the factors of colour variety and graphical background clutter than for the number of icons. Older participants performed more slowly than younger participants did, particularly for more difficult targets. However, the impact of the three complexity factors on acquisition time appeared to be comparable for both age groups. The results suggest that implementations of colour varieties and graphical backgrounds on interfaces should be restricted, especially when icon acquisition is a common activity involved in interacting with an interface.     

An experimental investigation of the impact of domain complexity on knowledge acquisition (KA) methods

This paper experimentally examines the effects of domain complexity on the quality of knowledge acquired and the efficiency with which knowledge acquisition (KA) is accomplished. The experiment is performed using two of the most prominent KA methods: unstructured interviews and protocol analysis. One contribution of the research is that it employs an experimental strategy that pays particular attention to addressing problematic issues of measurement and control. The experimental results indicate that domain complexity strongly influences the quality of knowledge acquired when protocol analysis is used for KA. While finding the other hypotheses to be inconclusive, some interesting trends were also identified regarding the quality and efficiency of knowledge acquisition methods.     

A Delphi-based approach to developing expert systems with the cooperation of multiple experts

Knowledge acquisition has been a critical bottleneck in building knowledge-based systems. In past decades, several methods and systems have been proposed to cope with this problem. Most of these methods and systems were proposed to deal with the acquisition of domain knowledge from single expert. However, as multiple experts may have different experiences and knowledge on the same application domain, it is necessary to elicit and integrate knowledge from multiple experts in building an effective expert system. Moreover, the recent literature has depicted that “time” is an important parameter that might significantly affect the accuracy of inference results of an expert system; therefore, while discussing the elicitation of domain expertise from multiple experts, it becomes an challenging and important issue to take the “time” factor into consideration. To cope with these problems, in this study, we propose a Delphi-based approach to eliciting knowledge from multiple experts. An application on the diagnosis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has depicted the superiority of the novel approach.     

Process factors in knowledge acquisition

Abstract: Knowledge acquisition (KA) is often characterised as a crucial bottleneck in the development of expert system applications. General definitions of KA view it as a collection of subprocesses such as elicitation, analysis and representation, but in actual practice, each KA occurrence may involve one or all of these subprocesses in varying sequences and combinations. No model or framework currently exists for describing the many possible variations in KA processes as they actually occur. This article presents a new way of characterising knowledge acquisition processes that is not tied to one particular technique or approach to KA. Three nested levels are proposed to characterise the many possible variations and combinations of KA dynamics: the process, episode and transaction levels of analysis. Each of these is further delineated in a top-down manner. Not only does this scheme provide a fairly comprehensive means for viewing KA dynamics as a whole, but it suggests several factors that have heretofore drawn little research attention. The suggested constructs capture more accurately what actually occurs in the practice of KA. In so doing they also provide the foundation for structuring future research into how KA processes may unfold.     

Progress in the Development of National Knowledge Infrastructure

This paper presents the recent process in a long-term research project,called National Knowledge Infrastructure(or NKI).Initiated in the early 2000,the project aims to develop a multi-domain shareable knowledge base for knowledge-intensive applications.To develop NKI,we have used domain-specific ontologies as a solid basis,and have built more than 600 ontologies.Using these ontologies and our knowledge acquisition methods,we have extracted about 1.1 millions of domain assertions.For users to access our NKI knowledge,we have developed a uniform multi-modal human-knowledge interface.We have also implemented a knowledge application programming interface for various applications to share the NKI knowledge.     

基于仿真的军用电子设备故障知识获取新方法

故障知识获取瓶颈问题严重限制了我国军用电子设备智能诊断系统的发展。该文首先分析了军用电子设备的特点,然后总结了通过故障仿真获取故障知识的一般过程,在此基础上提出了计算机自动穷举设备所有可能故障,并进行仿真获取故障知识的新方法。提出4个关键策略解决仿真工作量及自动建立故障集的问题。提出了电路故障知识获取平台的建立方案作为该方法的具体实现。该文所提出的知识获取自动化在一定程度上解决了故障数据收集困难的根本问题,同时使获得的知识更完整。最后,实验结果证实其可行性。     

A Survey of Commonsense Knowledge Acquisition

Collecting massive commonsense knowledge (CSK) for commonsense reasoning has been a long time standing challenge within artificial intelligence research. Numerous methods and systems for acquiring CSK have been developed to overcome the knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Although some specific commonsense reasoning tasks have been presented to allow researchers to measure and compare the performance of their CSK systems, we compare them at a higher level from the following aspects: CSK acquisition task (what CSK is acquired from where), technique used (how can CSK be acquired), and CSK evaluation methods (how to evaluate the acquired CSK). In this survey, we first present a categorization of CSK acquisition systems and the great challenges in the field. Then, we review and compare the CSK acquisition systems in detail. Finally, we conclude the current progress in this field and explore some promising future research issues.     

Integrated knowledge acquisition architectures

An architecture for knowledge acquisition systems is proposed based upon the integration of existing methodologies, techniques and tools which have been developed within the knowledge acquisition, machine learning, expert systems, hypermedia and knowledge representation research communities. Existing tools are analyzed within a common framework to show that their integration can be achieved in a natural and principled fashion. A system design is synthesized from what already exists, putting a diversity of well-founded and widely used approaches to knowledge acquisition within an integrative framework. The design is intended to be clean and simple, easy to understand, and easy to implement. A detailed architecture for integrated knowledge acquisition systems is proposed that also derives from parallel cognitive and theoretical studies.