Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation

This paper describes an approach to supporting work in the office. Using and extending ideas from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) we describe office work as a problem solving activity. A knowledge embedding language called Omega is used to embed knowledge of the organization into an office...

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Main Author: Barber, Gerald R.
Published: 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/149034
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author Barber, Gerald R.
author_facet Barber, Gerald R.
author_sort Barber, Gerald R.
collection MIT
description This paper describes an approach to supporting work in the office. Using and extending ideas from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) we describe office work as a problem solving activity. A knowledge embedding language called Omega is used to embed knowledge of the organization into an office worker's workstation in order to support the office worker in his or her problem solving. A particular approach to reasoning about change and contradiction is discussed. This approach uses Omega's viewpoint mechanism. Omega's viewpoint mechanism is a general contradiction handling facility. Unlike other Knowledge Representation systems, when a contradiction is reached the reasons for the contradiction can be analyzed by the deduction mechanisms without having to resort to a backtracking mechanism. The Viewpoint mechanism is the heart of the Problem Solving Support Paradigm. This paradigm supplements the classical AI view of problem solving. Office workers are supported using the Problem Solving Support Paradigm. An example is presented where Omega's facilities are used to support an office worker's problem solving activities. The example illustrates the use of viewpoints and of Omega's capabilities to reason about it's own reasoning process.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1490342023-03-30T03:22:11Z Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation Barber, Gerald R. This paper describes an approach to supporting work in the office. Using and extending ideas from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) we describe office work as a problem solving activity. A knowledge embedding language called Omega is used to embed knowledge of the organization into an office worker's workstation in order to support the office worker in his or her problem solving. A particular approach to reasoning about change and contradiction is discussed. This approach uses Omega's viewpoint mechanism. Omega's viewpoint mechanism is a general contradiction handling facility. Unlike other Knowledge Representation systems, when a contradiction is reached the reasons for the contradiction can be analyzed by the deduction mechanisms without having to resort to a backtracking mechanism. The Viewpoint mechanism is the heart of the Problem Solving Support Paradigm. This paradigm supplements the classical AI view of problem solving. Office workers are supported using the Problem Solving Support Paradigm. An example is presented where Omega's facilities are used to support an office worker's problem solving activities. The example illustrates the use of viewpoints and of Omega's capabilities to reason about it's own reasoning process. 2023-03-29T14:21:37Z 2023-03-29T14:21:37Z 1982-07 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/149034 10633952 MIT-LCS-TM-224 application/pdf
spellingShingle Barber, Gerald R.
Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation
title Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation
title_full Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation
title_fullStr Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation
title_full_unstemmed Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation
title_short Supporting Organizational Problem Solving with a Workstation
title_sort supporting organizational problem solving with a workstation
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/149034
work_keys_str_mv AT barbergeraldr supportingorganizationalproblemsolvingwithaworkstation