We have developed a method and prototype program for assisting two experts in their attempts to construct a single, consensus knowledge base. We show that consensus building can be effectively facilitated by a debugging approach that identifies, explains, and resolves…

The Internet is a powerful channel that presents new opportunities for touching
customers, enriching products and services with information, squeezing out costs
through process automation, and redesigning internal business processes through
enhanced communication and knowledge sharing. In…

This study presents the results of an empirical test of two hypotheses concerning the
quality of a group of data processing patents on methods of doing business. The
hypotheses are motivated by two frequently voiced criticisms of these…

by Stephen R. Balzac., Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1987., Title as it appeared in M.I.T. Graduate List, June 1987: An interactive knowledge classifier., Bibliography: leaves 111-112.

If we are to understand human-level intelligence, we need to understand how meanings can be learned without explicit instruction. I take a step toward that understanding by focusing on the symbol-grounding problem, showing how symbols can emerge from a system…

The program described here takes as its input a collection of lines, vertices and surfaces describing a scene, and analyzes the scene into a composition of three-dimensional objects. The program does not need to know the form (model, or pattern)…

Continued advances in the semiconductor industry will require the introduction of new materials and processes concurrent with shrinking device dimensions. These simultaneous demands drastically reduce margins for error and necessitate an increasingly quantitative understanding of semiconductor processes. Leaders of the…

This dissertation investigates how rapid learning occurs in high technology industries, many of which operate in what Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) term "high velocity environments." The dissertation consists of three empirical studies, which follow the method of extended case study…

All intelligence relies on search --- for example, the search for an intelligent agent's next action. Search is only likely to succeed in resource-bounded agents if they have already been biased towards finding the right answer. In artificial agents, the…

A methodology to improve the effectiveness of the design of innovation is proposed based on knowledge in the fields of psychometrics, utility theory and stochastic choice modeling. It is comprised of a consumer response and a managerial design process. The…