Expert Systems. From the Artificial Intelligence entry in Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. "The basic components of an expert system are a knowledge base, or KB, and an inference engine. The information to be stored in the KB is obtained by interviewing people who are expert in the area in question. The interviewer, or knowledge engineer, organizes the information elicited from the experts into a collection of rules, typically of an 'if-then' structure. Rules of this type are called production rules. The inference engine enables the expert system to draw deductions from the rules in the KB." (Excerpt from page 20, Knowledge and Inference.)

Expert Systems: Where Are We? And Where Do We Go from Here? By Randall Davis. AI Magazine 3(2): Spring 1982, 3-22. "Work on Expert Systems has received extensive attention recently, prompting growing interest in a range of environments. Much has been made of the basic concept and of the rule-based system approach typically used to construct the programs. Perhaps this is a good time then to review what we know, asses the current prospects, and suggest directions appropriate for the next steps of basic research. I'd like to do that today, and propose to do it by taking you on a journey of sorts, a metaphorical trip through the State of the Art of Expert Systems. We'll wander about the landscape, ranging from the familiar territory of the Land of Accepted Wisdom, to the vast unknowns at the Frontiers of Knowledge. I guarantee we'll all return safely, so come along...."

Expert Systems - Make a Diagnosis. Part of It's Alive! - From airport tarmacs to online job banks to medical labs, artificial intelligence is everywhere. By Jennifer Kahn. Wired Magazine (March 2002/ Issue 10.03). "Intuition may seem like a human trick, but machines can be pretty good at it, too. Underlying a hunch are dozens of tiny, subconscious rules - truths we've learned from experience. Add them up and you get instinct: a doctor's sense that a patient's stomachache might really be appendicitis, for example. Program those rules into a computer and you get an expert system - one of many that can screen lab tests, diagnose blood infections, and identify tumors on a mammogram."

Expert Systems. Section 1.2.3 of Chapter One (available online) of George F. Luger's textbook, Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving, 5th Edition (Addison-Wesley; 2005)."One major insight gained from early work in problem solving was the importance of domain-specific knowledge. A doctor, for example, is not effective at diagnosing illness solely because she possesses some innate general problem-solving skill; she is effective because she knows a lot about medicine. Similarly, a geologist is effective at discovering mineral deposits because he is able to apply a good deal of theoretical and empirical knowledge about geology to the problem at hand. Expert knowledge is a combination of a theoretical understanding of the problem and a collection of heuristic problem-solving rules that experience has shown to be effective in the domain. Expert systems are constructed by obtaining this knowledge from a human expert and coding it into a form that a computer may apply to similar problems.

This reliance on the knowledge of a human domain expert for the system's problem solving strategies is a major feature of expert systems."

Expert Systems Standard Grade Bitesize Revision & Test. A Computing Studies General Purpose Package from BBC Education Scotland.

Expert Systems - Computers as sages. By Howard Rheingold. Digital Deli (1984; It is posted on www.atariarchives.org with the approval of Steve Ditlea, editor of the book, for archival purposes only.). "Should you ever want to drill for oil, diagnose a disease or synthesize a new molecule, you can ask Prospector, MYCIN or Dendral for some sage advice. They are certified experts in their respective fields. They are also computer programs. We all depend on expert assistance-from doctors, attorneys, automobile mechanics, computer repairmen. Wouldn't it be nice to have our own experts?"

• Also see the companion article at the bottom of the page: Expert Systems History - "Edward A. Feigenbaum was one of the people in artificial intelligence research who decided, in the mid-1960s, that it was important to know how much a computer program can know and that the best way to find out would be to try to construct an artificial expert. While looking for an appropriate field of expertise, Feigenbaum encountered Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel laureate biochemist, who suggested that organic chemists sorely needed assistance in determining the molecular structure of chemical compounds. Together with Bruce Buchanan, Lederberg and Feigenbaum began work on Dendral, the first expert system, in 1965 at Stanford University."

Introduction to Expert Systems. From expertise2go.com. "This tutorial shows you how a computer-based expert system emulates the behavior of a human advisor, presents terminology unique to the field and introduces the activities that must be accomplished to build expert systems."

• Don't miss their Expert System Glossary and the rest of their tutorials and demos.

Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence. Part of the Introduction by Robert S. Engelmore and Edward Feigenbaum for the May 1993 Japanese Technology Evaluation Center panel's report about Knowledge-Based Systems in Japan, and now available from the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC). Topics covered include "The Building Blocks of Expert Systems" ("Every expert system consists of two principal parts: the knowledge base; and the reasoning, or inference, engine.") and "Knowledge Engineering" ("[T]he art of designing and building expert systems, and knowledge engineers are its practitioners".).

• Be sure to check out the Table of Contents for additional information including, Expert Systems Building Tools: Definitions, by H. Penny Nii: "An expert system tool, or shell, is a software development environment containing the basic components of expert systems. Associated with a shell is a prescribed method for building applications by configuring and instantiating these components."

VIDEO - Rule-Based Expert Systems and Knowledge Engineering: part one of Patrick Winston's online Artificial Intelligence course for ArsDigita University. Video available via the AAAI Video Archive.

Expert System Tutorial. Major George Hluck. "The purpose of this brief and introductory tutorial is to quickly educate the reader on expert systems. The material presented in this tutorial is also used in our advanced course, Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence, which is taught during the second and third terms at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA."

Expert Systems: video clip of Herbert A. Simon explaining the anatomy of an expert system. From AI: What Can it Do? Where is it Going? (March 21, 1990) and part of the Carnegie Mellon University Archives' exhibit: Mind Models - Artificial Intelligence Discovery. At Carnegie Mellon: Into the Future.

Knowledge Engineers and Epistemological Entrepreneurs. Chapter 13 of the 1985 edition of Howard Rheingold's Tools for Thought (The MIT Press). "Expert systems as they exist today are made of three parts -- a base of task-specific knowledge, a set of rules for making decisions about that knowledge, and a means of answering people's questions about the reasons for the program's recommendations. The 'expert' program does not know what it knows through he raw volume of facts in the computer's memory, but by virtue of a reasoning-like process of applying the rule system to the knowledge base; it chooses among alternatives, not through brute-force calculation, but by using some of the same rules of thumb that human experts use. ... In the 1980s, there is little question that expert systems can be highly effective, if not superior to human expertise, in certain highly specialized fields. Twenty years ago, few people, even inside the artificial intelligence community, were confident that it could be done at all. ... Expert systems are now in commercial and research use in a number of fields. A partial sampling: ...."

• Visit Exsys and be sure to check out their Knowledge Automation Expert Systems demos.

Artificial intelligence gets real. By Daniel Lyons. Forbes Global (November 30, 1998) ."By contrast, Feigenbaum succeeded by thinking small. Unlike his rivals, he didn't set out to recreate all of human intelligence in a computer. His idea was to take a particular expert -- a chemist, an engineer, a pulmonary specialist -- and figure out how that person solved a single narrow problem. Then he encoded that person's problem-solving method into a set of rules that could be stored in a computer."

Introduction to AI and Expert Systems. By Carol E. Brown and Daniel E. O'Leary. The tutorial uses summaries and outline form to explain AI, reasoning, and knowledge engineering. Examples of expert systems used in business accounting are described.

OpenClinical offers this overview of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) which includes:

• a section about Early AI / Decision Support Systems, and
• a collection of AI / Decision Support Systems in clinical practice.

An early look at artificial Intelligence. The Computer Chronicles (1984 television broadcast) / video available from The Internet Archive. "Guests include Edward Feigenbaum of Stanford University, Nils Nilsson of the AI Center at SRI International, Tom Kehler of Intellegenetics, Herb Lechner of SRI, and John McCarthy of Stanford." Seller of Software Used in Bankruptcy Petitions Held ‘Preparer.’ By Tina Bay. Metropolitan News-Enterprise (February 28, 2007). "The seller of web-based software used to prepare bankruptcy petitions qualifies as a 'bankruptcy petition preparer' subject to the requirements of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday. The court unanimously agreed with a Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel that now-defunct Ziinet.com owner and operator Henry Ihejirika violated 11 U.S.C. Sec. 110, which imposes certain obligations on bankruptcy petition preparers and penalizes negligent or fraudulent preparation. The court also affirmed the BAP’s conclusion that Ihejirika had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. ... One of the sites owned and operated by Ihejirika was the 'Ziinet Bankruptcy Engine,' which represented itself to prospective customers as being 'an expert system' and claimed to 'know [ ] bankruptcy laws right down to those applicable to the state' in which the particular user lived."

• The Reynoso v. Frankfort Digital Services, Ltd. opinion is avaiable from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Be sure to see footnote 9: "... we express no view as to whether software alone, or other types of programs, would constitute the practice of law."
• Also see this article: Beware the Unauthorized Practice of Law in Cyberspace. By Shari Claire Lewis. New York Law Journal / available from Law.com (June 6, 2007). "Consider the recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in In re Reynoso [fn]. ... Frankfort sold access to Web sites where customers could access browser-based software for preparing bankruptcy petitions and schedules, as well as informational guides promising advice on various aspects of relevant bankruptcy law. Included in the site was the following representation: 'Ziinet is an expert system and knows the law. Unlike most bankruptcy programs which are little more than customized word processors the Ziinet engine is an expert system. It knows bankruptcy laws right down to those applicable to the state in which you live.' ... The circuit [court] concluded that Frankfort had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. It observed that Frankfort's sites offered extensive advice on how to take advantage of so-called loopholes in the Bankruptcy Code, promised services comparable to those of a 'top-notch bankruptcy lawyer,' and described its software as 'an expert system' that would do more than function as a 'customized word processor.' Moreover, the appellate court added, the software went 'far beyond providing clerical services.' It determined where (particularly, in which schedule) to place information provided by the debtor, selected exemptions for the debtor, and supplied relevant legal citations. Providing such personalized guidance amounted to the practice of law, the appellate court held."