ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERT SYSTEM
1. History of AI
The seed of AI were sown only two years after General Electric installed the first computer
for business use. The year was 1956, and the term artificial intelligence (AI) was coined by john
McCarthy as the theme of a conference held at Dartmouth College . That same year, the first AI
computer program, called Logic Theorist was announced. Logic Theorist’s limited ability to the
reason (proving calculus theorems) encourage researchers to develop another program called the
General Problem Solver (GPS), which was intended to solve problems of all kinds. The task
turned out to be more then the early pioneers could handle.
AI research continued, but it took backseat to the less ambitious computer applications such
as MIS and DSS. Over time, however, persistent research continued to push back the frontiers of
using the computer for tasks that normally require human intelligence.
2. Areas of AI
AI is currently being applied in business in the form of knowledge systems, which use
human knowledge to solve problems. The most popular type of knowledge-based system is the
expert system. An expert system is a computer program that attempts to represent the knowledge
of human expert in the form of heuristics is derived from the same Greek root as the word eureka,
which means “to discover”. A heuristic is, therefore, a rule of good guessing.
Heuristics do not guarantee results as absolutely as do conventional algorithms that are
incorporated into DSSs, but they offer results that are specific enough most of the time to be
useful. The heuristics allow the expert system to function in a manner consistent with a human
expert, advising the user on how to solve a problem. Since the expert system functions as a
consultant, the act of using it is called a consultation--the user consults the expert system for
advice.
In addition to expert system, AI includes work in the following areas: neural networks,
perceptive systems, learning, robotics, AI hardware, and natural language processing. These
areas are illustrated the way that one area can benefit the others.
3. The Appeal of Expert System
The concept of expert system is based on the assumption that an expert’s knowledge can be
captured in computer storage and then applied by others when the need arises.