Abstracts of Current Literature

S OF CURRENT LITERATURE The following Technical Reports cover work done under the DARPA research described on page 136. available from Department of Computer and Information Service University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 Interactive Classification: A Technique for the Acquisition and Maintenance of Knowledge Bases Tim Finin, David Silverman MS-CIS-84-17 Reports are The practical application of frame-based knowledge-based systems, such as in expert systems, requires the maintenance of potentially very large amounts of declarative knowledge stored in their knowledge bases (KBs). As a KB grows in size and complexity, it becomes more difficult to maintain and extend. Even someone who is familiar with the representation and the contents of the existing KB may introduce inconsistencies and errors whenever an addition or modification is made. This paper describes an approach to this problem based on a tool called an interactive classifier. An interactive classifier uses the contents of the existing KB and knowledge about its representation to assist the person who is maintaining the KB in describing new KB objects. The interactive classifier will identify the appropriate taxonomic location for the newly described object and add it to the KB. The new object is allowed to be a generalization of existing KB objects, enabling the system to learn more about existing objects. The ideas have been tested in a system call KuBIC, for Knowledge Base Interactive Classifier, and are being extended to a more complete knowledge representation language. Correcting Object-Related Misconceptions: How Should The System Respond?