Suggesting what to do next

AISA (Artificial Intelligence Systems of Administration) is an ongoing research project whose long-term goal is development of an intelligent assistant to a business executive or administrator. The intelligent assistant will remove much of the burden of administrative chores from its human user and provide guidance, advice, and assistance in problem solving and decision making. This paper provides an overview of the system, with emphasis on the module that proposes the next item to which an administrator should give attention and suggests the appropriate action to perform with respect to that item. Expertise in the domain is represented by Horn-clause declarative knowledge and can be expanded incrementally. This work illustrates that sophisticated AI techniques can be successfully applied using microcomputers. It also addresses an increasingly important area of application, that of efficient multi-agent cooperation and communication in the administrative domain.