Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!houxm!mhuxt!mhuxm!mhuxh!mhuxo!ulysses!sfmag!sfsup!saal
From: saal@sfsup.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: dear abby....
Message-ID: <1147@sfsup.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Mar-87 10:36:17 EST
Article-I.D.: sfsup.1147
Posted: Mon Mar  2 10:36:17 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Mar-87 19:14:19 EST
References: <178@arcsun.UUCP>
Reply-To: saal@/guest5/saalUUCP (45444-AUG871-S.Saal)
Organization: very little
Lines: 26
Summary: It depends on when

In article <178@arcsun.UUCP> roy@arcsun.UUCP (Roy Masrani) writes:
>
>Dear Abby.  My friends are shunning me because i think that to call
>a program an "expert system" it must be able to explain its decisions.
>"The system must be able to show its line of reasoning", I cry.  They
>say "Forget it, Roy... an expert system need only make decisions that
>equal human experts.  An explanation facility is optional".  Who's
>right?
>Signed,
>Un*justifiably* Compromised
>Roy Masrani, Alberta Research Council

It all depends.  During development it is absolutely necessary
for the system to give its reasoning, if only as a useful
debugging tool. (Is the system using the correct logic to get to
the decision.)  Once it is "in production" (the field) it may not
be as important tot give an explanation every time.  This is
particularly the case when the expert system is used to help do
some of the more mundane tasks on a very frequent basis.  There
are 2 reasons for this. (1) the user may be able to agree
intuitively after deriving the answer -  the machine has just
helped speed the process. OR (2) If a production ES has been
converted to a compiled language,  the code to express the
rationale may be removed to speed up run time.

Sam Saal