An Expert System that Volunteers Advice

Application Systems

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2

Knowledge/Databases

This paper describes the design and implementation of an expert system that provides novice users with help in using the Vax/VMS operating system. The most interesting feature of our advisor is that it follows the user’s interactions with the system and volunteers its help when it believes that the user would benefit from advice. The user need not ask for help or raise an error condition. The adivsor recognizes correct yet inefficient command sequences and helps the beginner become more proficient by indicating how these tasks may be done more efficiently.