an effective graphics user interface for rules and inference mechanisms
As the technology of rule-based inference mechanisms matures, knowledge acquisitionthe creation, structuring, and verification of rulesbecomes increasingly important. The accuracy and completeness of the rules in the knowledge base determine expert system performance, and the cost of acquiring that knowledge base dominates all other hardware and software costs in practical systems. To reduce knowledge acquisition time and error rate, a new interactive graphics interface for rules is being designed and implemented in GE Corporate Research and Development. In the new system, each set of rules is represented as an AND/OR graph and parts of the rule base are displayed on a CRT screen as an AND/OR tree. A usereven an unsophisticated usercan navigate the AND/OR graph, identify nodes to be modified, analyze the behavior of the graph, verify its correctness graphically, and follow the execution of inference engines.
expert systems user interfaces and/or trees