Beginning in the mid 1960s, a new type of system, called an expert system, began to be developed to support management in the decision making process. The new type of system, which represents one of the first practical applications of artificial intelligence, is an exciting addition to the kinds of computer systems available to businesses. However, expert systems are designed to be users' assistants, not replacements.
An expert system solves problems that require substantial expertise to understand. The system's performance depends on the body of facts and the heuristics that are fed into the computer. Knowledge engineers gather, largely through interviews, the expert knowledge and the heuristics from human experts in the field for which the computer based system is being designed to support decisions-fields such as medicine, engineering, or geology.The responses recorded during the interviews are codified and entered into a knowledge base that can be used by a computer. An expert system has the capacity to store the collection of knowledge and manipulate it in response to user inquiries; in some cases, it can ever explain its responses to user.
An expert system solves problems that require substantial expertise to understand. The system's performance depends on the body of facts and the heuristics that are fed into the computer. Knowledge engineers gather, largely through interviews, the expert knowledge and the heuristics from human experts in the field for which the computer based system is being designed to support decisions-fields such as medicine, engineering, or geology.The responses recorded during the interviews are codified and entered into a knowledge base that can be used by a computer. An expert system has the capacity to store the collection of knowledge and manipulate it in response to user inquiries; in some cases, it can ever explain its responses to user.
