Artificial Intelligence & Expert System

• Definitions
• Evolution of A.I.
• Components of A.I.
• Expert Systems
Definitions :

• Artificial Intelligence : It is one of the branch in computer

science which is in the development of
computers(machines) behave like humans.
• A.I. includes games , expert system, neural networks,
robotics and natural language.

• Expert System : An expert system is computer application

which simulates has expert knowledge and experience in a
particular field. For e.g. make financial forecasts, diagnose
human illness etc.
• To design expert system one needs to know how human
experts make decisions and translates the rules into
terms(programs) that a computer understands.
 Evolution of A.I.
• The field of A.I. research was founded at a conference
on the Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956
started with solving problems in algebra, proving
logical theorems.
• In the mid 60’s ,research in the US was heavily funded
by the Dept. of Defense and lab. had been established
around the world . In 1954 because of some problem
US and British govt. reduced the budget of research in
A.I.
• In early 1980’s A.I. research was revived by the
commercial success of expert system , a program of A.I.
program that simulated the knowledge and analytical
skills of one or more human experts.
• By 1985 the market for A.I. had reached over a billion
dollars.
• At the same time in 1985 Japan fifth generation
computer project inspired the US and British
governments to restore funding for academics research
in the field.
• In the 1990’s and early 21st century A.I. achieved its
greatest success as it is used for logistics, data mining ,
medical diagnosis and many other areas throughout
the technology industry.
• The success was due to several factors such as:
o The incredible power of computers today , a greater
emphasis on solving specific sub- problems, the creation of
new ties between A.I. and other fields working on similar
problems , and above all a new commitment by
researchers to them resolve complicated mathematical
methods and rigorous scientific standards.
 Components of A.I.
➢ The field of artificial intelligence is a multi-disciplined subject that
reaches through computer science(computer/electrical
engineering), intelligence(neuroscience, cognitive science,
psychology).

➢ A.I. sets out to design intelligence machines, but exactly what sort
of intelligence will determine what sort of hardware is required to
build such machines. One could develop AI by means of software--
in which case a general-purpose computer may be adequate.

➢ Simple A.I. programs can be runned into a computer with the

appropriate programming language that compiles the source code
into machine code that the computer understands. More complex
programs that perform extensive inferencing and data-manipulation
require faster, more powerful, and even new kinds of hardware to
make up the short-comings that even programming techniques
cannot make up for.
 Software components
➢ Having the hardware necessary to develop AI is merely
half of the required components. It is the instructions
called software that tells the hardware what to do. The
early years of AI used general-purpose programming
languages like C++ to write programs that allowed
computers to think intelligently, but developers soon
realized that it took specialized languages to write the
kinds of programs that would make a computer
artificially intelligent.
➢ While there are hundreds of programming languages in
existence, the unique problems presented in AI require
specialized languages that operated on the basis of
logic. The main languages used today in AI
programming are LISP and PROLOG.
 Attributes of Intelligence Behavior
• Think & Reason
• Use Reason to solve Problems
• Learn or Understand from experience
• Acquire & apply knowledge
• Exhibit creativity & Exhibition
• Deal with complex & preplexing situation
• Respond quickly & successfully to new situations
• Recognize the relative importance of elements in situation
• Handle ambiguous, incomplete or erroneous information
➢AI has focused chiefly on the following
components of intelligence:
• Learning
• Reasoning
• Problem-solving
• Perception
• Language-understanding
Learning
• The simplest is learning by trial-and-error
• The simple memorizing of individual items--solutions to
problems, words of vocabulary, etc.--is known as
rote(routine) learning.
• Rote learning is relatively easy to implement on a
computer. More challenging is the problem of
implementing what is called generalization
• Learning that involves generalization leaves the learner
able to perform better in situations not previously
encountered.
Reasoning
• To reason is to draw inferences appropriate to the situation
in hand.
• Inferences are classified as either deductive or inductive.
• Reasoning involves drawing inferences that are relevant to
the task or situation in hand.
Problem-solving
• Problems have the general form: given such-and-such data, find
x. A huge variety of types of problem is addressed in AI. Some
examples are: finding winning moves in board games; identifying
people from their photographs; and planning series of
movements that enable a robot to carry out a given task.
• Problem-solving methods divide into special-purpose and
general-purpose.
• A special-purpose method is tailor-made for a particular
problem, and often exploits very specific features of the
situation in which the problem is embedded.
• A general- purpose method is applicable to a wide range of
different problems. One general-purpose technique used in AI is
means- end analysis, which involves the step-by-step reduction
of the difference between the current state and the goal state.
The program selects actions from a list of means--which in the
case of, say, a simple robot, might consist of pickup, putdown,
move forward, move back, move left, and move right--until the
current state is transformed into the goal state.
Perception
• In perception the environment is scanned by means of various
sense-organs, real or artificial, and processes internal to the
perceiver analyze the scene into objects and their features and
relationships. Analysis is complicated by the fact that one and the
same object may present many different appearances on different
occasions, depending on the angle from which it is viewed, whether
or not parts of it are projecting shadows, and so forth.
Language-understanding
• A language is a system of signs having meaning by
convention. Traffic signs, for example, form a mini-
language, it being a matter of convention that, for example,
the hazard-ahead sign means hazard ahead. This meaning-
by-convention that is distinctive of language is very different
from what is called natural meaning, exemplified in
statements like 'Those clouds mean rain' and 'The fall in
pressure means the valve is malfunctioning'.
 Expert system
• A computer application that performs a task that would otherwise be performed
by a human expert. For example, there are expert systems that can diagnose human
illnesses, make financial forecasts, and schedule routes for delivery vehicles. Some
expert systems are designed to take the place of human experts, while others are
designed to aid them.
• Expert systems are part of a general category of known as artificial intelligence . To
design an expert computer applications system, one needs human experts a
knowledge engineer, an individual who studies how to make decisions and
translates the rules into terms that a computer can understand.
Software architecture of an Expert System
An expert system is a knowledge based system, and where the
first commercial systems to use a knowledge-based architecture.

A knowledge-based system is essentially composed of two sub-

systems: the knowledge base and the inference engine.

Knowledge Base
The knowledge base represents facts about the world, in early
expert systems such as these facts were represented on
statements with variables.
However this was improved in later expert systems with the
development with commercial shells and the knowledge base
took on more structure and utilized concepts from object-
oriented programming.
This new structure was used classes, subclasses, and instances
and statements were replaced by values of object instances.
Inference Engine

The inference engine is an that automated reasoning system

evaluates the current state of the knowledge-base, and then
applies relevant rules. It will then assert new knowledge into
the knowledge base.

The inference engine may also include capabilities for explanation

to a user, it will explain chain of reasoning used to arrive at a
particular conclusion by tracing back over the rules that led to a
change in the knowledge base.
As technology is changing, there is new methods that are
incorporated into the Inference engine. They are:
❖ Truth Maintenance: Truth maintenance systems record the
dependencies in a knowledge-base so that when facts are altered
dependent knowledge can be altered accordingly.
❖ Hypothetical Reasoning: This is where the knowledge base can be
divided up into many possible views, aka worlds. This allows the
inference engine to explore multiple possibilities in parallel to one.
❖ Fuzzy Logic: is an approach to variable processing that allows for
multiple possible truth values to be processed through the same
variable. Fuzzy logic attempts to solve problems with an open,
imprecise spectrum of data and heuristics that makes it possible
to obtain an array of accurate conclusions.
❖ Ontology Classification: This change was made to work with
object classes for a new knowledge base reasoning system. Rather
than reason simply about the values of the objects the system
could also reason about the structure of the objects as well.
Advantages of Expert Systems
❖The computer can store a lot more information than
a human can store, a computer can store large
amounts of information (depending on the storage
method) and can bring back the information when it
is needed. Unlike a human who can understand
everything but will forget information over time and
can create data inconstancies.
❖A computer will rarely make mistakes as they just
get the information of backing storage and won’t
forget unlike a human who will as no human can
remember large amounts of information.
❖The data that is stored can be kept up to data on a
regular basis; can back up the data and make
necessary updates to the system when facts change.
❖The expert system will always work 24 hours a day
and will never ‘retire’ unlike a human
✓This allows cost benefits as you do not have to pay
for an expert and unlike a human; you can always
keep using them for a long period of time.
✓No need for hiring an expert in the area, and the fees
of paying for office supplies
❖You can distance the system over a network that can
be accessed by anyone from anywhere (but this
depends on the network).
❖No need for a trained programmer as the expert
system could develop the systems and fix any issues it
has within its own databanks.
Reading Assignment:

What are the disadvantages of expert system?