INTRODUCTION TO

EXPERT SYSTEMS
Lecture-1/2

By
Dr. M. Tahir Khaleeq

Total Slides 27 1
Expert Systems
• Expert Systems are knowledge-based systems which
contain expert knowledge and can provide an expertise,
similar to the one provided by an expert in a restricted
application area.

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• An expert system is a program that can provide expertise
for solving problems in a defined application area in the
way the expert do.

• The two sides of an expert system:

1. The experts’ side
2. The user’s side

• It takes a long time (usually several years) to become an

expert. 3
Example:
Expert system for diagnosis of cars has a knowledge base
containing rules for checking a car and finding faulty
elements, as it would be done by a specialized engineer.

IF (meter is OK)
AND [TEMPERATURE] > 120
THEN Cooling system is in the state of overheating

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 Expert Systems? Why

– Order-of-magnitude increase by expert in solving tasks

– Increased quality of work
– Reduced errors
– Reduced cost
– Decreased personnel and training time
– Improved decisions
– Improved customer service

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

• Expertise includes:
- Facts about the problem area.
- Theories about the problem area.
- Hard-and-fast rules and procedures regarding the
general problem area.
- Rules(heuristics) of what to do in a given problem
situation (rules regarding problem solving).
- Global strategies for solving these type of problems.
- Meta - knowledge (knowledge about knowledge)
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Facts about Expertise
• Experitse is usually associated with
– High degree of intelligence
– Quality of knowledge

Experts
• Experts behave the following activities:
– Recognizing and formulating the problem
– Solving the problem quickly and properly
– Explain the solution
– Learning from experience (past successes and mistakes)
– Restructuring knowledge
– Determining relevance
– Awareness of limitations.
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Expert Systems Facilities
– Representing existing expert knowledge
– Accommodating existing database
– Learning and accumulating knowledge during
operation
– Learning new pieces of knowledge from existing
database
– Making logical inferences
– Making decision and giving recommendations
– Communicating with user in a friendly way.
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• Expert systems have been used successfully in about every

field of human activity, including Engineering, Science,

Medicine, Manufacturing, Education and Training,
Business, Finance and design.

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Expert System Shells
• Previous Expert systems were all written in Lisp, C,
Prolog, etc...
• In order to speedup the design process, expert system
shells are developed. They have architecture of an expert
system, but are empty of knowledge. The knowledge is
entered in the empty knowledge-based modules of the
shell.
• By using shells it becomes much easier to build an
Expert System.
• Examples: EMYCIN, OPS5 (rule-based), SOAR
(revision of OPS5 with chunking), KADS (Knowledge
Acquisition), CSRL, DSPL, RA, Peirce (GT tools) 10
 Expert System Architecture

Experts Knowledge Data

Base Base

Inference
Engine

Knowledge User
Explanation
Acquisition Interface

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The Knowledge Base Module
• It is where the problem knowledge resides
– It may be a production memory in production
languages.
– It may be a set of fuzzy rules in a fuzzy system
– It may be neural networks (has been trainind with
the past data) in the connectionist expert systems.

The Database Module

• It is the working memory in the production languages.
• In some architectures this module can be used as a source

of knowledge (past data) in addition to the knowledge

base. 12
The Inference Engine

• It is a program that controls the functioning of the expert

system.
• It contains an inference mechanisms, either forward
chaining, or backward chaining, or a combination of
them.

The Explanation Module

• It is a module that traces the execution of the expert
system and transfers this accumulated information to the
user.
• EX: WHY it is checking a condition element in a rule, or
HOW it has inferred some conclusion. 13
 Stop the car
How?

There is over heating Why?

How?
Why? The brakes respond slowly

The meter works properly The temperature is over 120

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The User Interface Module
• Its role is to communicate with the environment, to
interact with the user in a friendly way.
• Natural language and speech processing may be used
for communication with users.

The Knowledge Acquisition Module

• It is designed to accumulate knowledge to build up the
knowledge base.
Knowledge Acquisition:
• Interview experts
• Learning from data
• Literature
• Agents on the Web 15
 Expert System Design
• An expert systems design is very much a heuristic process

although some global phases have been shared among

expert system designers.

Five Stages of Expert System Development

IDENTIFICATION CONCEPTUALIZATION FORMULATION

VALIDATION REALIZATION

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Stage-1 Identification of the Problem
– What class of problems with the expert system be
expected to solve?
– How can be these problem be defined?
Stage-2 Conceptualization
– What is given and what should be inferred?
– What types of data and knowledge are available?
– Is there a need for knowledge acquisition?

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Stage-3 Formulization
– Here major issues related to the knowledge should be
discussed. The issues are:
1. Representation 2. Inference 3. Learning
4. Generalization 5. Interaction 6. Explanation
7. Validation 8. Adaptation.
– Are data and knowledge are insufficient, or plentiful
and redundant?
Is there a need to deal with uncertainty?
– Are data and knowledge reliable, accurate and precise,
or unreliable, inaccurate, and imprecise?
Are they consistent and complete?
– What kind of explanation is needed/
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Stage-4 Realization
– What methods and tools are appropriate for
representation data and knowledge: data based
systems, symbolic AI methods, fuzzy systems, neural
networks etc?
– Extendibility, friendliness, reliability, robustness of
the realization.
Stage-5 Experiments and Validation of the Results
– How to evaluate the system and the error?
– How to validate the results:
– Compare experimental results with the results
obtained by experts,
– Compare results with the results obtained by other
methods etc. 19
 The Iterative Process of Identifying the Problem

Process Knowledge Engineer Writes

Expert Describes Cases Problem Description
begins

Does
Description Adequately
NO Describe
Problem?

YES

Description Complete

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 The Iterative relationship between
the Identification and Conceptualization

Process Conceptualization
Identification
begins

Is
Identification
NO Adequate ?

YES

Development Process Continues

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 Main Problems in Building
Expert Systems
1. How to acquire knowledge from experts?
2. How to extract knowledge from a huge mass of
previously collected data?
3. How to represent incomplete, corrupted and
contradictory data and knowledge?
4. How to perform approximate reasoning?

• Fuzzy systems and neural networks provide solutions to

these problems.
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 Categories of Expert Systems
Interpretation Systems
– Inferring situation descriptions from observations.
Ex: Surveillance, Speech understanding, Image analysis,
Signal interpretation, and many kinds of intelligence
analysis.

Prediction Systems
– Inferring likely sequences of given situations.
Ex: Weather forcasting, Demographic predictions,
Economic forcasting, Traffic predictions, Crops
estimates, and Military, Marketing, or Financial
forecasting. 23
Diagnostic Systems
– Inferring system malfunctions from observations.
Ex: Medical, Electronic, Mechanical, Software.

Design Systems
– Configuring objects under constraints.
Ex: Circuit layout, Building design, Plant layout.

Planning Systems
– Develop plans to achieve goals.
Ex: Project management, Routing, Communications,
Product development, Military applications and
Financial planning.
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Monitoring Systems
– Compare observations of system behavior with standards.
Ex: Plant monitoring, Aircraft monitoring.
Debugging Systems
– Prescribing remedies for malfunctions.
Repair Systems
– Develop and execute plans to administer a remedy for
some diagnosed problems. Such systems incorporate
debugging, planning and execution capabilities.
Instruction Systems
– Diagnosing, debugging, and correcting student
performance.
Control Systems
– Adaptively govern the overall behavior of a system.
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 Examples of Expert Systems
1965 DENDRALStanford analyze mass spectrometry data
1965 MACSYMA MIT symbolic mathematics problems
1972 MYCIN Stanford diagnosis of blood diseases
1972 ProspectorSRI Mineral Exploration
1975 Cadeceus U. of PITT Internal Medicine
1978 DIGITALISMIT digitalis therapy advise
1979 PUFF Stanford obstructive airway diseases
1980 R1 CMU computer configuration
1982 XCON DEC computer configuration
1983 KNOBS MITRE mission planning
1983 ACE AT&T diagnosis faults in telephone cables
1984 FAITH JPL spacecraft diagnosis
1986 ACES Aerospace satellite anomaly diagnosis
1986 Cambpell diagnose cooker malfunctions
1986 DELTA/CATS GE diagnosis of diesel locomotives
1987 AMEX credit authorization
1992 MAX NYNEX telephone network troubleshooting
1995 Caltech PacBell network management
1997 UCI planning drug treatment for HIV 26
END

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