Department of Information Systems School of Computing and Informatics

Chapter 6
Introduction to Expert Systems
Introduction:
Expert systems are a very successful application of artificial intelligence technology. Expert systems
were developed as research tools in the 1960s as a special type of AI to successfully deal with complex
problems in a domain such as medical disease diagnosis. Expert systems have greatly increased in
popularity since their commercial introduction in the early 1980s. Today, expert systems are used in
business, science, engineering, manufacturing, and many other fields in which there exists a well-defined
problem domain.

The basic idea is that if a human expert can specify the steps of reasoning by which a problem may be
solved, so it can be implemented as an expert system.

Expert systems have been combined with databases for human-like pattern recognition and automated
decision systems to yield knowledge discovery through data mining and thus produce an intelligent
database. One important application is in airport security systems that use face recognition of suspects as
a front-end to an expert system, which determines if there is justification in proceeding with further
notification of authorities.

Definitions:
“An expert system is a computer system that emulates or acts in all aspects with the decision making
capabilities of a human expert”.

“An expert system is an intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to
solve problems that are difficult enough to require significant human expertise for their solution”.

Areas of AI: Computer vision, Natural Language Processing & Understanding, Expert Systems,

Artificial Neural Network, Speech Recognition, Robotics.

Basic Function of Expert System

An expert is a person who has expertise in a certain area. An expert can solve problems that most people
cannot solve at all or solve them much more efficiently. Expert systems make extensive use of
specialized knowledge to solve problems at the level of human expert. However, the term expert system
is often applied today to any system that uses expert system technology. Expert system technology may
include special expert system languages, programs, and hardware designed to aid in the development and

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execution of expert systems. The knowledge in expert systems may be either expertise, or knowledge that
is generally available from books, magazines, and knowledgeable persons.

The above figure illustrates the basic concept of a knowledge-based expert system. The user supplies
facts or other information to the expert system and receives expert advice or expertise in response.
Internally, the expert system consists of two main components. The knowledge base contains the
knowledge with which the inference engine draws conclusions. These conclusions are the expert system’s
responses to the user’s queries for expertise.

Expert System Components

Expert Systems: are computer applications which embody some non-algorithmic expertise for solving
certain types of problems. For example, expert systems are used in Diagnostic application servicing both
people and machinery. They also play chess, make financial planning decision, configuring computers,
monitor real time systems, underwrite insurance policies, and perform many other services which
preciously required human expertise.

Experts – Degrees or levels of expertise (Human or Computer)

Expertise: is the extensive, task-specific knowledge acquired from training, reading and experience.

 Expertise is usually associated with a high degree of intelligence, but not always with the smartest
person
 Expertise is usually associated with a vast quantity of knowledge
 Experts learn from past successes and mistakes
 Experts knowledge is well-stored, organized and retrievable quickly from an expert
 Experts have excellent recall.

Structure of Expert Systems

The elements of a typical expert system are shown in the above figure. In a rule-based system, the
knowledge base contains the domain knowledge needed to solve problems coded in the form of rules.

An expert system consists of the following components

1. User Interface – mechanism by which user and system communicate

2. Explanation facility – explains reasoning of expert system to user
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3. Working memory – global database of facts used by rules

4. Inference engine – makes inferences by deciding which rules are satisfied by facts and
prioritizing the satisfied rules, and executes the rule with the highest priority
5. Agenda – a prioritized list of rules created by the inference engine, whose patterns
are satisfied by facts or objects in working memory.

6. Knowledge acquisition facility – automatic way for the user to enter knowledge in the system
rather than by having the knowledge engineer explicitly code the knowledge.
7. Knowledge base – includes the rules of the expert system.

What is an Expert System?

A computer based system which:
 Relies on internally represented knowledge to perform tasks.
 Utilizes reasoning methods to derive appropriate new knowledge
 Usually restricted to a specific problem domain

Problem Domain vs. Knowledge Domain

An expert’s knowledge is specific to one problem domain as opposed to general problem-solving

techniques. For example, Medicine, Finance, Science, Engineering, etc.

An expert’s knowledge about solving specific problems is called the knowledge domain of the expert.
For example, a medical expert system designed to diagnose infectious diseases will have a great deal of
knowledge about certain symptoms caused by infectious diseases. In this case the knowledge domain is
medicine and consists of knowledge about diseases, symptoms and treatments.

The problem domain is always a superset of the knowledge domain. Notice that in the above figure, the
knowledge domain is entirely included within the problem domain. The portion outside the knowledge
domain symbolizes the area in which there is not knowledge about all the problems within the problem
domain. For example, infectious diseases diagnostic system usually does not have knowledge about other
branches of medicine such as surgery or pediatrics.

The need for Expert Systems

 Experts are not always available. Expert System can be used anywhere, anytime.
 Human experts are not 100% reliable or consistent
 Experts may not be good at explaining decision.
 Cost effective

Advantages of Expert Systems

Increased availability: Expertise is available on any suitable computer hardware. In a very real
sense, an expert system is the mass production of expertise.
Reduced cost: The cost of providing expertise per user is greatly lowered.
Reduced danger: Expert systems can be used in environments that might be hazardous for a
human.

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Permanence: The expertise is permanent. Unlike human experts who may retire, quit, or die, the
expert system’s knowledge will last indefinitely.
Multiple expertise: The knowledge of multiple experts can be made available to work simultaneously
and continuously on a problem at any time.

Increased reliability: Expert systems increase confidence that the correct decision was made by
providing a second opinion to a human expert. The expert system should always agree with the expert.
Explanation: The expert system can explain in detail the reasoning that led to a conclusion. A human
may be too tired, unwilling, or unable to do this all the time.
Fast response: Depending on the software and hardware used, an expert system may respond faster and
be more available than a human expert.
Steady, unemotional and complete responses at all times: This may be very important in real-time and
emergency situations when a human expert may not operate at peak efficiency because of stress or
fatigue.
Intelligent tutor: The expert system may act as an intelligent tutor by letting the student run sample
programs and explaining the system’s reasoning.
Intelligent database: Expert systems can be used to access a database in an intelligent manner. Data
mining is an example.

The process of developing an expert system has an indirect benefit also since the knowledge of human
experts must be put into a explicit form for entering in the computer. Because the knowledge is then
explicitly known instead of being implicit in the expert’s mind.

Characteristics of Expert Systems

An expert system is usually designed to have the following general characteristics:

High performance: The system must be capable of responding at a level of competency equal to or
better than a human expert in the field.

Adequate response time: The system must perform in a reasonable time, comparable to or better than
the time required by an expert to reach a decision. The time constraints placed on the performance of an
expert system may be especially severe in the case of real-time systems, when a response must be made
within a certain time interval such as landing an aircraft in fog.

Good Reliability: The expert system must be reliable and not prone to crashes or else it will not be used.
Understandable: The system should be able to explain the steps of its reasoning while executing so that
it is understandable.

Flexibility: Because of the large amount of knowledge that an expert system may have, it is important to
have an efficient mechanism for adding, changing, and deleting knowledge.

Sample Applications of Expert Systems

With the acceptance of the knowledge based paradigm in the 1970s, a number of successful expert
systems were created. For example,

DENDRAL – used in chemical mass spectroscopy to identify chemical constituents

MYCIN – medical diagnosis of illness

DIPMETER – geological data analysis for oil

PROSPECTOR – geological data analysis for minerals

XCON/R1 – configuring computer systems.

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Common domains (application areas) of Expert Systems

1. Design Domain – Camera lens design, automobile design.

2. Medical Domain – Diagnosis systems to deduce cause of disease from observed data, conduction
of medical operations on humans.
3. Monitoring Systems – comparing data continuously with observed system or with prescribed
behavior such as leakage monitoring in long petroleum pipeline.
4. Process control systems – controlling a physical process based on monitoring
5. Knowledge domain – finding out faults in vehicles, computers
6. Finance/commerce – detection of possible fraud, suspicious transactions, stock market trading,
airline scheduling, cargo scheduling.
7. Configuration – Assemble proper components of a system in the proper way.
8. Instruction – Intelligent teaching/tutoring.
9. Prognosis – predict the outcome of a given situation.

Appropriate Domains for Expert Systems:

Before starting to build an expert system, it is essential to decide if an expert system is the appropriate
paradigm. That is, whether an expert system should be used instead of an alternative paradigm such as
conventional programming. The appropriate domain for an expert system depends on a number of
factors:

1. Can the problem be solved effectively by conventional programming?

If the answer is yes, then an expert system is not the best choice. For example, consider the
problem of diagnosing some equipment. If all the symptoms for all malfunctions are known in advance,
then a simple table lookup or decision tree of the fault is adequate. Expert systems are best suited for
situations in which there is no efficient algorithmic solution. Such cases are called ill-structured problems
and reasoning may offer the only hope of good solution.

A major advantage of expert systems technology is dealing with unexpected input that does not
follow a predetermined pattern. That is, expert system reacts opportunistically to their input, whatever it
is. Conventional programs generally expect input to follow a certain sequence.

2. Is the domain well-bounded?

It is very important to have well-defined limits on what the expert system is expected to know and
what its capabilities should be. For example, suppose you wanted to create an expert system to diagnose
headaches. Certainly medical knowledge of a physician would be put in the knowledge base. However,
for deep understanding of headaches, you might also put in knowledge about neurochemistry,
psychology, stress management, exercise. The point of all this is – when do you stop adding domains?
The more domains, the more complex the expert system becomes.

3. Is there a need and a desire for an expert system?

Although it’s great experience to build an expert system, it’s rather pointless if no one is willing
to use it. If there already are many human experts, it’s difficult to justify an expert system based on the
reason of scarce human expertise. Management especially must be willing to support the system.
Workers must be reassured that the expert system will not lead to job loss but to increased profitability as
expertise becomes more widely available at a lower cost. The risks are greater but so are the rewards.

4. Is there at least one human expert who is willing to cooperate?

There must be an expert who is willing, and preferably enthusiastic, about the project. Even if
there are multiple experts willing to cooperate in the development, it might be wise to limit the number of
experts involved in development. Different experts may have different ways of solving a problem, such
as requesting different diagnostic tests. Sometime they may even reach different conclusions.

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5. Can the expert explain the knowledge so that it is understandable by the knowledge engineer?
Even if the expert is willing to cooperate, there may be difficulty in expressing the knowledge in
explicit terms. As a simple example of this difficulty, can you explain in words how you move a finger?
Although you could say it’s done by contracting a muscle in the finger, the next question is – how do you
contract a finger muscle? The other difficulty in communication between expert and knowledge engineer
is that the knowledge engineer doesn’t know the technical terms of the expert.

6. Is the problem-solving knowledge mainly heuristic and uncertain?

Expert systems are appropriate when the expert’s knowledge is largely heuristic and uncertain.
That is, the knowledge may be based on experience, called experiential knowledge, and the expert may
have to try various approaches in case one doesn’t work. In other words, the expert’s knowledge may be
a trial-and-error approach, rather than one based on logic and algorithms.

The Goal of Expert System is, to be able to

• Separate the actual meanings of words with the reasoning process itself and make inferences
without relying on semantics.
• Need to reach valid conclusions based on facts only.

Limitations of Expert System

 Typical expert system cannot generalize through analogy to reason about new situations in the
way people can.
 A knowledge acquisition bottleneck results from the time-consuming and labor intensive task of
building an expert system.
 High development costs
 Difficult to maintain
 Will not Produce accurate output for inadequate knowledge base
 No common sense
 Not always up-to-date, don’t learn
 Limited domain
 Limitations of technology

Conventional Programming vs. Symbolic Programming:

1. Representation and use of data - Representation and use of knowledge

2. Algorithmic processing - Heuristic processing
3. Repetitive process - Inferential process
4. Effective manipulation of
large databases - Effective manipulation of large knowledge bases.

Computer based systems:

1. Transaction processing system (TPS) – based on Data (by processing of raw observation)
2. Management Information System(MIS),
Decision Support System (DSS) - based on Information (by analysis)
3. Knowledge Based System - based on Knowledge (by synthesis)
4. Wisdom Based System - based on Wisdom (by experience) - strategy makers apply
morale, principles and experience to generate policies.

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