An Assumption-based Truth Maintenance System in ActiveAid for UNIX Users

  • Authors:

  • John Jones;Mark Millington;Maria Virvou

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK;Interactive Business Systems, Inc. 2625 Butterfield Road, Oak Brook, Illinois 60521, USA (E-mail: markmillington@msn.com);Department of Computer Science, University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli & Dimitriou St., Piraeus 18534, Greece (E-mail: mvirvou@unipi.gr)

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Intelligence Review - special issue on intelligent help systems for Unix part II: planning and knowledge representation
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of assigning meaningto the interaction of a user with a command-drivensystem such as UNIX. This research is part of theconstruction of an active intelligent help system thatmonitors users in order to offer spontaneous help whenthey are facing problems. In order to ensure this, thehelp system must build and maintain a model of theuser. We describe a mechanism that is used by the usermodelling component of such a help system. Thismechanism makes explicit assumptions about the userwhich account for different hypotheses about what theuser is actually thinking at every stage of theinteraction. The consistency of these assumptions ismanaged by an Assumption-based Truth MaintenanceSystem (ATMS). The selection between a number ofdifferent user models is based on the informationwhich is extracted from the feedback that UNIXprovides in response to user actions.