marcel@uiucdcs.UUCP (marcel ) (03/27/84)
#R:eosp1:-71500:uiucdcs:32300022:000:939 uiucdcs!marcel Mar 26 19:16:00 1984 There is no need for expert system software to be well-understood by anyone but its designers; there IS a need for systems to be able to explain THEMSELVES. Witness human thinking: after 30 years of serious AI and much more of cognitive psychology, we still don't know how we think, but we have relatively little trouble getting people to explain themselves to us. I think that we will not be able to produce such self-explanatory software until we come up with a fairly comprehensive theory of our own mental workings; which is, admittedly, not the same as understanding an expert program. On the other hand, if you're a theoretical sort you tend to accept Occam's razor, and so I believe that such a theory of cognition will be as simplifying as the Copernican revolution was for astronomy. Thereafter it's all variations on a theme, and expert systems too will one day be correspondingly easy. Marcel S. U of Illinois