ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE - THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE

This paper presents an anthropological study of knowledge production i n the expert systems community within AI. Expert systems are built by knowledge engineers, specialists in the task known as 'knowledge acqui sition'. This is a complex process of interpretation and translation; not surprisingly (to an anthropologist, at least), it presents a troub lesome 'bottleneck. However, knowledge engineers have a different pers pective on why this is so. Typically positivist in approach, they see knowledge acquisition as conceptually straightforward. In their view, it is difficult, not because of the nature of knowledge or the complex ity of the process, but rather because it requires extended face-to-fa ce interaction between knowledge engineer and expert. Believing that a utomation will 'get around' the inexact and uncontrollable nature of t his interaction, they seek to automate it. Drawing on ethnographic mat erial, the paper explores the knowledge engineers' epistemological sta nce, noting its characteristic deletions, and suggesting that they are reflected in the resultant technology.