TONY OTIENO GAYA

SCT221-0414/2020
BIT 2319 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
CAT 1

1. Give a definition of “Expert System”.

An expert system is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) technologies
to simulate the judgment and behaviour of a human or an organization that has expertise
and experience in a particular field.
a) Outline how Expert Systems can be distinguished from more conventional computer
systems.
Generally, in expert systems, the use of knowledge is vital. But in conventional system
data is used more efficiently than knowledge. Conventional systems are not capable of
explaining a particular conclusion for a problem. These systems try to solve in a straight
forward manner. But expert systems are capable of explaining how a particular
conclusion is reached and why requested information is needed during a process.
b) In the context of Expert Systems, describe what the term “knowledge acquisition” covers.
In Knowledge Acquisition, The success of any expert system majorly depends on the
quality, completeness, and accuracy of the information stored in the knowledge base.
The knowledge base is formed by readings from various experts, scholars, and the
Knowledge Engineers. The knowledge engineer is a person with the qualities of empathy,
quick learning, and case analyzing skills.
c) Outline some of the main technical problems one has to overcome when attempting
to build a successful Expert System for a new domain.
1. Understanding the requirements of the expert system, the problem in the organization
and possible solutions.
2. Identifying the kind of knowledge that is required to solve the problem and how to
represent it in a form that can be used by the expert system. Some kinds of knowledge can
be difficult to acquire and transform.
3. Acquiring the knowledge from the human experts, books and other sources.
4. Ensuring that the knowledge extracted is accurate and complete to guarantee the
efficiency of the expert system.
5. The actual implementation of the expert system, identifying the suitable software and
hardware to support the expert system.
 2. Some common problems that can occur when building expert systems are:

a) The expert’s knowledge base and the inference engine algorithms get inextricably
entwined, and it becomes impossible to update one without introducing problems
into the other.
- The solution to this problem would be implementing and maintaining the knowledge base
and the inference engine algorithms independently.

b) Having spent months extracting and representing rules from an expert, the knowledge base
is still seriously incomplete and cannot solve even the simplest problems.
- The solution would be to have an evolved state in the art expert systems. Work along
these lines is being carried out by a number of organizations, and what is known about
these projects is described here.
c) The expert has given us so many rules that the operation of the system has become
unacceptably slow.
1. Intermediate representation – a structured knowledge representation that the
knowledge engineer and expert can both work with efficiently.
2. Production system – a formulation that the expert system’s inference engine can
process efficiently.
d) The knowledge acquisition process has taken much longer than we expected, and now our
expert refuses to work with us anymore.
The solution is to find the refinement of the components and have some form of human
friendly intermediate representation.
e). Having got our expert system to perform well, it is now proving impossible to figure out
how it is coming up with its outputs.
Medical diagnosis (the knowledge base would contain medical information, the symptoms of
the patient would be used as the query, and the advice would be a diagnose of the patient’s
illness)
Playing strategy games like chess against a computer (the knowledge base would contain
strategies and moves, the player's moves would be used as the query, and the output would be
the computer's 'expert' moves)