Auszug aus: Künstliche Intelligenz, Heft 4/2007, ISSN 0933-1875, BöttcherIT Verlag, Bremen, www.kuenstliche-intelligenz.de/order Connecting People with Questions to People with Answers Mehmet H. Göker, Cynthia Thompson, Simo Arajärvi, Kevin Hua The Connection Machine helps PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) partners and staf to solve problems by connecting people to people. It allows information seekers to enter their question in free text, fnds knowledgeable colleagues, forwards the question to them, obtains the answer and sends it back to the seeker. In the course of this interaction, the application unobtrusively learns and updates user profles and thereby increases its routing accuracy. The Connection Machine combines aspects of expertise locators, adaptive case-based recommender systems and question answering applications. 1 The Power of Connected People Information, knowledge and experience are key success fac- tors and the most important competitive advantage for any business. However, most of this core corporate asset is in the heads of the employees and cannot be easily accessed, shared or distributed. Capturing and protecting it in docu- ments (electronic or otherwise) is not only cumbersome, but the documents become rapidly outdated and the mainte- nance efort required to keep document collections up-to- date is formidable. Furthermore, in the complex business scenarios of today’s world, problem solving requires an increasingly large amount of specialized knowledge. It is nearly impossible for one indi- vidual to be an expert in every aspect of a company’s busi- ness and deliver comprehensive solutions. Problem solving requires co-operation and the sharing of ideas and informa- tion. The size of a corporation and the collective knowledge of its employees are only valuable if these employees can share their information and cooperate. We believe that the best way to provide the most up-to-date and accurate information to those who seek it is by putting them directly in touch with the experts and implemented this idea in the PwC Connec- tion Machine. 2 Directory Systems, Expertise Locators and the Connection Machine Most frms allow their employees to search for other col- leagues by means of directories or expertise locator systems. Directory systems are essentially computerized versions of phone-books and help users to fnd the contact information of the person they are looking for using the name or depart- mental information. Expertise locators extend the data con- tained in the employee directories with work experience and areas of specialization. They sometimes provide the ability to search for experts using free text and typically permit users to select and contact the suggested experts from within the application [1, 2]. Both directory systems and expertise loca- tors return contact information of potentially knowledgeable people as a result of a query. It is left to the seeker to contact the experts and obtain the answer. The Connection Machine extends directory systems and expertise locators beyond the pure search for contact informa- tion and helps PwC partners and staf to get answers to their questions and to solve problems together. The Connection Machine matches incoming questions to the expertise pro- fles of users, routes questions to the experts whose profles are of the highest similarity until one of them answers, col- lects the answer and relays it back to the seeker. Experts can also refer the question to a more knowledgeable colleague from their personal network. Users can interact with the Con- nection Machine by email or through its web interface. By providing answers to questions rather than just locat- ing people, the Connection Machine acts as a virtual, adaptive expertise provider. The application merges technologies from expertise locators (e.g. expertise profles, routing of ques- tions) with adaptive case-based recommender systems (e.g. user modeling, selection of experts to route the question to) and question answering applications. From the seeker‘s per- spective, the application encapsulates all experts in the frm and provides real answers to real questions. 3 Overview of the Connection Machine Figure 1 provides a general overview of the interaction between the information Seeker, potential Providers and the Figure 1: Overview of the application workfow in the PwC Connection Machine KI 4/07 23 Projekt