Context appears in Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a challenge for the coming years as shown by the various scientific events focusing on context held since 1995. However, context is already considered in other domains, such as Natural Language Processing, although through few aspects of context. We present in this paper a survey of the literature dealing directly and explicitly with context whatever the domain is. This permits us to have a clear view of the context in AI. One of the conclusions of this survey is to point out the existence of different types of context along knowledge representation, the mechanisms of reasoning on the knowledge, and the interaction of the computer system with humans.

. This paper suggests that a distinction between knowledge acquisition methods should be made. On the one hand there are methods which aim to help the expert and knowledge engineer analyse what knowledge is involved in solving a particular type of problem and how this problem solving is carried out. These methods are concerned with classifying the different types of problem solving and providing tools and methods to help the knowledge engineer identify the appropriate approach and ensure nothing is omitted.. A different approach to knowledge acquisition focuses on ensuring incremental addition of validated knowledge as mistakes are discovered (validated knowledge here means only that the earlier performance of the system is not degraded by the addition of new knowledge). The organisation of this knowledge is managed by the system rather than the expert and knowledge engineer. This would seem to correspond to human incremental development of expertise. From this perspective...

Context appears in AI as a challenge for the coming years as shown by the various scientific events focusing on context held since 1995. However, context is already considered in other domains, as Natural Language, although through few aspects of context. We present in this paper a survey of the literature dealing directly and explicitly with context whatever the domain is. This permits to have a clear view on the context in AI. One of the conclusions of this survey is to point out the existence of different types of context along knowledge representation, the mechanisms of reasoning on the knowledge, and the interaction of the computer system with a human.