Artificial Intelligence.

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Chris Oliver

Expert Systems Assignment 1 – Debra Harvey

Define what is meant by the term Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that deals with the creation of computer programs that can provide solutions that otherwise humans would have to solve.

On a broader spectrum artificial intelligence attempts to imitate human behavior and intelligence to generate these computer programs.

However artificial intelligence is the youngest of studies, and is evolving every day.

The ultimate aim of artificial intelligence and its study is to imitate and/or duplicate intelligence of humans in computers and robots.

Artificial Intelligence improves productivity, personnel upgrading, new training and to aid in the solving of difficult problems.


With the aid of a suitable diagram, illustrate the branches of A.I and define where Expert Systems reside within it.

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The diagram above illustrates the seven (7) areas that Artificial Intelligence is comprised of. Of course with the speed of progression of such a complex study such as Artificial Intelligence these areas are rapidly growing however they are more commonly defined in to one of these seven ‘branches’.

“AI has many areas of interest. The area of expert systems is a very successful approximate solution to the classic AI problem of programming intelligence.”  

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Expert systems are a branch of Artificial Intelligence that makes extensive use of specialized knowledge to solve problems at the same level as a human expert.


With the aid of suitable diagrams, define what an expert system is and its’ functional and structural components.

One of the major results of the study of Artificial Intelligence is the development of a method that allows systems to be built that closely resemble human intelligence and logic in their implementation and evolution.

These systems effectively emulate human expertise in well defined problem domains.

The systems are recognised and commonly known as ‘Expert Systems’.

An expert system is used to effectively advise, diagnose and troubleshoot problems that previously were performed by human experts.

The main advantage of using expert systems is that they bring specialised knowledge straight to the fingertips and observation of a novice.

An example of when an expert system would be used is as follows;

In business when people retire or leave expert systems are used to detain the vital information that would otherwise leave with the humans.

The basic shell architecture of an expert system is illustrated below:

[http://www.ai.kun.nl/cursusinfo/aicourses/co313/ ]

As the diagram shows there are three vital components that give an expert system its structure, each of which is described below.

User Interface

This is the area in which the user views, this usually is a simple and easy way of navigating a system and its areas.

The function of the user interface is to present questions and information to the operator and supply the operator's responses to the Inference Engine.

The interface is important because any values entered by the user must be received and interpreted. The interface and its construction is important in that it checks the the responses of the user to ensure that they are of a correct input type (validation). If the user is to incorrectly input a response the interface’s job is to display to the user that they have entered the information incorrectly.

As previously explained the user interface is cross referenced with the inference engine, in that the communication is more often than not constant. This is done via the UICB (User Interface Control Block).

The user interface is extremely important if the user is to get the up most benefit from the system, it must not challenge the user or make it difficult or uncomfortable for them to find what they want.

This is because the user interface is where all the information is to be inputted, therefore if a comfortable interface is given to the user they are more likely to enter more accurate and quantity of information because they are not under pressure from the interface.

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Expert systems use interactive dialogues to ask questions to the end user, by prompting the user with singular questions sequentially it can then select appropriately which question it is going to ask next to lead to the right result for the system.

Inference Engine

The inference engine has a simple definition; it is the brains of the expert system.

The inference engine is simply the brains in the expert system that implements the reasoning behind a problem solution.

The inference engine is basically made up of numerous rules that in turn draw up conclusions to proposed questions. These rules ...

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