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The post below sounds more like it is talking about knowledge management
systems than expert systems. I've only heard the term "knowledge engineer"
related to knowledge management, not expert systems.
As I understand it, knowledge management is a business practice related to
(gathering/recording/organizing/making public and searchable) company
knowledge such as business processes, inventory, contacts, employee skills,
how decisions were reached, how projects evolved, etc; knowledge management
systems are computer programs that aid this effort. I think this area is
closely related to technical writing. In fact, companies often call their
knowledge management projects "internal documentation projects". Someone
told me there is a good book of case studies on such systems from Microsoft
Press called "Knowledge Management Strategies" or something like that, but I
haven't read it myself.
On the other hand, expert systems is a specific sub-branch of the field of
Artificial Intelligence; it involves building computer programs that act as
decision-makers, usually for a technical domain. For example, several
famous expert systems have been built that help doctors figure out what kind
of antibiotics to prescribe, help auto mechanics diagnose engine problems,
help computer manufacturers build custom systems that meet their clients
needs. In addition to "interviewing experts" (which is usually a much more
precise process than just talking to them) to get the data which goes into
the expert system, someone building an expert system also usually needs a
good background in programming, logic, and statistics. (Knowledge about data
mining wouldn't hurt either.) I would guess this is not very closely
related to technical writing. Most undergraduate textbooks on Artificial
Intelligence would contain a chapter or section devoted to expert systems.
To bring the differences into focus: an end-user of a knowledge management
system would be _asking_ questions of the system (e.g. "What report contains
the ROI calculations for Project X?" or "Who knows the vendor contact at
ACME Corp.?"), while an end-user of a expert system would be _answering_
questions from the system (e.g. "Is the patient's temperature above 101?" or
"Did the gram stain come back positive?").
-Jennifer Freeman
basilisk -at- acm -dot- org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-48038 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> [mailto:bounce-techwr-l-48038 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of John Locke
> Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 12:35 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Expert Systems and Modeling survey
>
>
> Last week I polled the list about expert systems, and to my surprise, only
> got two responses, one providing a URL to a company using
> techniques related
> to expert system development, and the other asking about the state of the
> technology and whether a specific problem could be addressed by one.
>
> I learned about them initially by being hired into a technical writing
> position that turned out to be more of a knowledge engineering position.
> With my affinity for problem solving, I found it quite fun to have to
> analyze and model problems, in addition to writing about them. So I'm now
> trying to learn how widespread this is in the computer industry.
> Most of the
> recruiters I've spoken with recently don't have any idea what a knowledge
> engineer is.
>
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