Knowledgeable contexts for user interaction

Abstract

ASK, A Simple Knowledgeable System, is a total system for the structuring, manipulation, and communication of information. The ASK user interface is a simple dialect of natural English. The system includes extensive means by which a user group and application programmer can build a knowledgeable context for user interaction. The users themselves can build, modify, and extend their knowledge base. They can add complex definitions that embody knowledge of their domain. They can ground a new tentative knowledge base on more stable ones, modifying and extending their new one without affecting the old. A truly knowledgeable system must also know how to perform complex tasks in response to terse user inputs, taking over complicated but repetitive tasks on simple cues. The ASK system includes three system-guided dialogues that can be used to build such knowledgeability into a user's context.

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