The Development Process of an Expert System

THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS OF AN EXPERT SYSTEM

By the definition, an expert system is a computer program that simulates the thought process of a human expert to solve complex decision problems in a specific domain. The expert system’s knowledge is obtained from expert sources which are coded into most suitable form. The process of building an expert system is called knowledge engineering and is done by a knowledge engineer. The knowledge engineer is a human with a background in computer science and AI and he knows how to build expert systems. A knowledge engineer also decides how to represent the knowledge in an expert system and helps the programmers to write the code. Knowledge engineering is the acquisition of knowledge from a human expert or any other source. The different stages in the development of an expert system are illustrated in figure.

Some latest developments in the expert system area are as follows:

1.     Availability of many tools that are designed to expedite the construction of expert system at a reduced cost.

2.     Increased use of expert systems in many tasks ranging from help desks to complex military and space shuttle applications.

3.     Use of multiple knowledge bases.

4.     Improvements in knowledge acquisition.

5.     Use of the internet to disseminate software and expertise.

6.     Increased use of object oriented programming approach in knowledge representation.

7.     The multiple use of heuristic knowledge in several applications.

8.     Enables the user to think about hypothetical reasoning.