Expert System

|Expert Systems |

|Overview: Knowledge-based expert systems, or simply expert systems, use human knowledge to solve problems that normally would |

|require human intelligence. These expert systems represent the expertise knowledge as data or rules within the computer. These |

|rules and data can be called upon when needed to solve problems. Books and manuals have a tremendous amount of knowledge but a |

|human has to read and interpret the knowledge for it to be used. Conventional computer programs perform tasks using conventional |

|decision-making logic -- containing little knowledge other than the basic algorithm for solving that specific problem and the |

|necessary boundary conditions. This program knowledge is often embedded as part of the programming code, so that as the knowledge|

|changes, the program has to be changed and then rebuilt. Knowledge-based systems collect the small fragments of human know-how |

|into a knowledge-base which is used to reason through a problem, using the knowledge that is appropriate. A different problem, |

|within the domain of the knowledge-base, can be solved using the same program without reprogramming. The ability of these system |

|to explain the reasoning process through back-traces and to handle levels of confidence and uncertainty provides an additional |

|feature that conventional programming don't handle. |

|Most expert systems are developed via specialized software tools called shells. These shells come equipped with an inference |

|mechanism (backward chaining, forward chaining, or both), and require knowledge to be entered according to a specified format |

|(all of which might lead some to categorize OPS5 as a shell). They typically come with a number of other features, such as tools |

|for...