Creating Explanations That Guide and Motivate

Based on a description of a knowledge continuum and on the knowledge combustion and vehicle analogy, problems regarding the explanation facilities of knowledge-based systems (KBS) are addressed. Furthermore, drawing from the lessons learned from the analysis of the video recordings of medical diagnostic telemedicine consultations, a new approach for developing justification and strategic explanation facilities for KBS is presented. Rather than enabling computers to make profound decisions and generate convincing explanations, which is not technically feasible according to the knowledge continuum, the development of a KBS that provides relevant explanations for specific diagnostic situations is proposed. The knowledge continuum indicates that there is a narrow gap between information, declarative knowledge and some types of pragmatic knowledge. To take advantage of this knowledge characteristic, the creation of a hybrid knowledge type that integrates several more explicit knowledge types through simple processes of extraction, representation, analysis, modelling and editing is proposed.