Acquiring Strategic Knowledge From Experts

Abstract: This paper presents an approach to the problem of acquiring strategic knowledge from experts. Strategic knowledge is used to decide what course of action to take, when there are confiicting criteria to satisfy and the effects of actions are not known in advance. We show how strategic knowledge challenges the current approaches to knowledge acquisition: knowledge engineering, interactive tools for experts, and machine learning. We present a knowledge acquisition methodology embodied by an interactive tooi that draws from each approach, automating much of what is currently performed by knowledge engineers, and synthesizing interactive and automatic learning techniques. The technique for eliciting strategic knowledge from experts and transforming it into an executable form addresses the technical problems of operationalization, encoding examples, biasing generalization, and the new terms problem.