Expert Systems

Unit-V

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 Expert Systems
 Expert system = knowledge + problem-solving methods
 A knowledge base that captures the domain-specific knowledge
and an inference engine that consists of algorithms for
manipulating the knowledge represented in the knowledge base to
solve a problem presented to the system.
 Expert systems (ES) are one of the prominent research domains of
AI. It is introduced by the researchers at Stanford University,
Computer Science Department.

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 Expert Systems
 The expert systems are the computer applications developed to
solve complex problems in a particular domain, at the level of
extra-ordinary human intelligence and expertise.
 The performance of an expert system is based on the expert's
knowledge stored in its knowledge base (KB). The more
knowledge stored in the KB, the more that system improves its
performance.
 One of the common examples of an ES is a suggestion of spelling
errors while typing in the Google search box.
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 Expert Systems
 It is important to remember that an expert system is not used to
replace the human experts; instead, it is used to assist the human
in making a complex decision.
 These systems do not have human capabilities of thinking and
work on the basis of the knowledge base of the particular domain

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 Examples of the Expert Systems
 Below are some popular examples of the Expert System:

1) DENDRAL: It was an artificial intelligence project that was made as a

chemical analysis expert system. It was used in organic chemistry to
detect unknown organic molecules with the help of their mass spectra
and knowledge base of chemistry.

2) MYCIN: It was one of the earliest backward chaining expert systems

that was designed to find the bacteria causing infections like
bacteraemia and meningitis. It was also used for the recommendation of
antibiotics and the diagnosis of blood clotting diseases.

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 Examples of the Expert Systems
3) PXDES: It is an expert system that is used to determine the type and level
of lung cancer. To determine the disease, it takes a picture from the upper
body, which looks like the shadow. This shadow identifies the type and
degree of harm.

4) CaDeT: The CaDet expert system is a diagnostic support system that can
detect cancer at early stages.

5) R1/XCON is an early manufacturing expert system that automatically

selects and orders computer components based on customer specifications.

6) DXplain is a clinical support system that diagnoses various diseases.

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 Characteristics of Expert Systems
 High Performance: The expert system provides high performance for
solving any type of complex problem of a specific domain with high
efficiency and accuracy.
 Understandable: It responds in a way that can be easily understandable
by the user. It can take input in human language and provides the output
in the same way.
 Reliable: It is much reliable for generating an efficient and accurate
output.
 Highly responsive: ES provides the result for any complex query
within a very short period of time. 7
 Capabilities/Incapabilities of Expert Systems
 The expert systems are capable of −
o Advising
o Instructing and assisting human in decision making
o Demonstrating
o Deriving a solution
o Diagnosing
o Explaining
o Interpreting input
o Predicting results
o Justifying the conclusion
o Suggesting alternative options to a problem

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 Capabilities/Incapabilities of Expert Systems
 They are incapable of −
o Substituting human decision makers
o Possessing human capabilities
o Producing accurate output for inadequate knowledge base
o Refining their own knowledge
 Components of Expert System
 An expert system mainly consists of three components:
1. User Interface
2. Inference Engine
3. Knowledge Base

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 Components of Expert System
1) User Interface
 With the help of a user interface, the expert system interacts with the user,
takes queries as an input in a readable format, and passes it to the inference
engine.
 After getting the response from the inference engine, it displays the output to
the user.
 In other words, it is an interface that helps a non-expert user to
communicate with the expert system to find a solution.

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 Components of Expert System

2) Inference Engine(Rules of Engine)

 The inference engine is known as the brain of the expert system as it is the
main processing unit of the system.
 It applies inference rules to the knowledge base to derive a conclusion or
deduce new information.
 It helps in deriving an error-free solution of queries asked by the user.
 With the help of an inference engine, the system extracts the knowledge from
the knowledge base.

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 Components of Expert System
 There are two types of inference engine:
o Deterministic Inference engine: The conclusions drawn from this type of
inference engine are assumed to be true. It is based on facts and rules.
o Probabilistic Inference engine: This type of inference engine contains
uncertainty in conclusions, and based on the probability.
 Inference engine uses the below modes to derive the solutions:
o Forward Chaining: It starts from the known facts and rules, and applies
the inference rules to add their conclusion to the known facts.
o Backward Chaining: It is a backward reasoning method that starts from
the goal and works backward to prove the known facts.
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 Components of Expert System

3) Knowledge Base:
 The knowledgebase is a type of storage that stores knowledge acquired from
the different experts of the particular domain.
 It is considered as big storage of knowledge. The more the knowledge base,
the more precise will be the Expert System.
 It is similar to a database that contains information and rules of a particular
domain or subject.
 One can also view the knowledge base as collections of objects and their
attributes. Such as a Lion is an object and its attributes are it is a mammal, it is
not a domestic animal, etc.
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 Components of Expert System
 Components of Knowledge Base
o Factual Knowledge: The knowledge which is based on facts and accepted
by knowledge engineers comes under factual knowledge.
o Heuristic Knowledge: This knowledge is based on practice, the ability to
guess, evaluation, and experiences.
 Knowledge Representation: It is used to formalize the knowledge stored in
the knowledge base using the If-else rules.
 Knowledge Acquisitions: It is the process of extracting, organizing, and
structuring the domain knowledge, specifying the rules to acquire the
knowledge from various experts, and store that knowledge into the knowledge
base. 14
 Components of Expert System
 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.
 He acquires information from subject expert by recording, interviewing, and
observing him at work, etc. He then categorizes and organizes the information in a
meaningful way, in the form of IF-THEN-ELSE rules, to be used by interference
machine.
 The knowledge engineer also monitors the development of the Expert System.
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 Limitations of Expert System

 Expert Systems Limitations: No technology can offer easy and

complete solution. Large systems are costly, require significant
development time, and computer resources.
 ESs have their limitations which include −
o Limitations of the technology

o Difficult knowledge acquisition

o ES are difficult to maintain

o High development costs

o It cannot learn from itself and hence requires manual updates.

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 Benefits of Expert Systems

The followings are the benefits of the expert systems

oAvailability −They are easily available due to mass production of software.

oLess Production Cost − Production cost is reasonable. This makes them

affordable.
oSpeed −They offer great speed. They reduce the amount of work an individual
puts in.
oLess Error Rate − Error rate is low as compared to human errors.

oReducing Risk − They can work in the environment dangerous to humans.

oSteady response − They work steadily without getting motional, tensed or

fatigued.
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 Applications of Expert Systems
 The following table shows where ES can be applied.

1) Application Description: Design Domain Camera lens design, automobile design.

2) Medical Domain: Diagnosis Systems to deduce cause of disease from observed

data, conduction 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.

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Expert System Shells

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 Knowledge Acquisition

Knowledge acquisition includes the elicitation, collection, analysis, modeling

and validation of knowledge.
1. Issues in Knowledge Acquisition
The important issues in knowledge acquisition are:
knowledge is in the head of experts
o

o Experts have vast amounts of knowledge

o Experts have a lot of tacit knowledge
o They do not know all that they know and use
o Tacit knowledge is hard (impossible) to describe
o Experts are very busy and valuable people
o One expert does not know everything
o Knowledge has a "shelf life" 20
 Knowledge Acquisition

2. Techniques for Knowledge Acquisition:

 The techniques for acquiring, analyzing and modeling knowledge are : Protocol-
generation techniques, Protocol analysis techniques, Hiera hy-generation
techniques, Matrix-based techniques, Sorting techniques, Limited-information and
constrained-processing tasks, Diagram-based techniques.
 Protocol-generation techniques:
 Include many types of interviews (unstructured, semi-structured and structured),
reporting and observational techniques.

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 Knowledge Acquisition

 Protocol analysis techniques

 Used with transcripts of interviews or text-based information to identify basic
knowledge objects within a protocol, such as goals, decisions, relationships
and attributes.
 These act as a bridge between the use of protocol-based techniques and
knowledge modeling techniques.
 Hiera hy-generation techniques:
 Involve creation, reviewing and modification of hiera hical knowledge.
 Hiera hy-generation techniques, such as laddering, are used to build
taxonomies or other hiera hical structures such as goal trees and decision
networks.
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 Knowledge Acquisition

 Matrix-based techniques:
 Involve the construction and filling-in a 2-D matrix (grid, table), indicating
such things, as may be, for example, between concepts and properties
(attributes and values) or between problems and solutions or between tasks and
resoures, etc.
 The elements within the matrix can contain: symbols (ticks, crosses, question
marks ) , colors , numbers , text.
 Sorting techniques
 Used for capturing the way people compare and order concepts; it may reveal
knowledge about classes, properties and priorities.

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 Knowledge Acquisition

 Limited-information and constrained-processing tasks:

 Techniques that either limit the time and/or information available to the expert
when performing tasks.
 For example, a twenty-questions technique provides an efficient way of
accessing the key information in a domain in a prioritized order.
 Diagram-based techniques:
 Include generation and use of concept maps, state transition networks, event
diagrams and process maps.
 These are particularly important in capturing the "what, how, when, who and
why" of tasks and events.

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