The Decision-Theoretic Video Advisor*
Hien Phuong Nhat Nguyen, Peter Haddawy · 1998
We describe ongoing work toward development of a decision-theoretic agent to help users choose videos based on their preferences. The DIVA (DecisionTheoretic Interactive Video Advisor) system elicits user preferences using a case-based technique. Hard constraints are used to permit the user to communicate temporary deviations from his basic preferences. If the user is not happy with the system's recommendations, he can provide feedback, which is used to modify the represented preferences and generate a new set of recommendations. We describe the fundamental algorithms, the implementation, and some results from some initial experimentation. Introduction We are interested in exploring the issues involved in providing users with preference-based access to information. Preference-based search is required, for example, when a user wishes to search an online catalog for a desired item or items but is unfamiliar with the domain or with the exact contents of the catalog. Take the example of s...