Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book comprises papers presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Expert Systems, held at the University of Warwick in December 1984, augmented by an initial overview paper placing the work in context. The papers cover many aspects of current research and development in Expert Systems, including Expert System shells, reasoning and inference in diagnostic systems, the man-machine interface, the representation of knowledge, and knowledge elicitation and acquisition, together with discussions of various applications of such systems. In addition, the texts of lectures by invited speakers on natural language processing and on the representation of knowledge are provided. The field of Expert Systems has developed very rapidly in recent years. This collection provides an up-to-date survey of the current state of the art by leading practitioners. It is essential reading for all who wish to keep up to date with both the achievements and the problems in this important field.