Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The epistemology of the common sense world
Message-ID: <705@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 19 Nov 88 02:45:39 GMT
References: <1651@ndsuvax.UUCP> <1666@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <3802@cs.utexas.edu> <1822@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <2025@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> <1840@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
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Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
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In article <1840@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
>we require enlightenment on how AI workers are trained to study tasks
>in the common sense world.  Task analysis and description is an
>established component of Ergonomics/Human Factors.  I am curious as to
>how AI workers have absorbed the experience here into their work, so
>that unlike old-fashioned systems analysts, they automate the real
>task rather than an imaginary one which fits into the machine.

>If I were to choose 2 dozen AI workers at random and ask them for an
>essay on methodological hygiene in task analysis and description, what
>are my chances of getting anything ...

I'm far from sure that I could _write_ such an essay, but I'd very much
like to _read_ it.  (I was hoping to find topics like that discussed in
comp.cog-eng, but no such luck.)  Could you give us a reading list, please?

I may have misunderstood him, but Donald Michie talks about "The Human
Window", and seems to be saying that his view of AI is that it uses
computers to move a task in complexity/volume space into the human window
so that humans can finish the job.  This would suggest that MMI and that
sort of AI should have a lot in common, and that a good understanding of
task analysis would be very helpful to people trying to build "smart tools".