Specialized Business

Information Systems

Chapter 7

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 The Nature of Intelligence

• Learn from experience & apply the knowledge

– Deep Blue improves its performance by playing with
humans
• Handle complex situations
– Traffic problem in Istanbul
• Solve problems when important information is
missing
– Based on available information
• Determine what is important
– Choose which facts to use to compute the solution
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 The Nature of Intelligence

• React quickly and correctly to new situations

– Requires understanding the new situation
• Understand visual images
– Requires perception
• Process and manipulate symbols
– Computers are better at dealing with numbers
• Be creative and imaginative
• Use heuristics
– Rules of thumb from experience

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A comparison of Natural and Artificial
Intelligence

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A Conceptual Model of Artificial
Intelligence

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 What is an Expert System?

• Hardware and software that contain knowledge and

manipulate knowledge by inferences
• Mycin (Shortliffe 1976): Expert system for medicine
– Program for advising physicians on treating
bacterial infections
– Question and answer dialogues with user
– Accounts for uncertainties
– Explains its reasoning

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 Characteristics of an Expert System

• Can explain their reasoning or suggested decisions

– Why recommend a certain medicine?
• Can display “intelligent” behavior
• Can draw conclusions from complex relationships
– A patient is diagnosed with two diseases,
– The cures for the diseases may have conflicts
• Can provide portable knowledge
– Capture knowledge in one’s brain
• Can deal with uncertainty
– A patient is diagnose without running all the tests

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 Characteristics of an Expert System

• Not widely used or tested

• Limited to relatively narrow problems
• Cannot readily deal with “mixed” knowledge
– Expert systems should talk to each other
• Cannot refine its own knowledge
– Should be able to keep a consistent knowledgebase
– Should have a way to gain new knowledge
• May have high development costs
• Raise legal and ethical concerns

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 When to Use Expert Systems

• High payoff
• Preserve scarce expertise
• Provide more consistency than humans
• Faster solutions than humans
• Training expertise

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Components of an Expert System

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The Relationships Among Data,
Information, and Knowledge

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Rules for a Credit Application

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The Knowledge Acquisition Facility

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 Knowledge Base

• Assembling human experts

– Combine knowledge from several experts
– Disagree on many items
• The use of fuzzy logic
– For relations that are not precise
– Is a 50-year old man old?
– Help computers deal with imprecise
knowledge
– Ex: Washing machines; Auto-focus cameras

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 Knowledge Base

• The use of rules

– Rule: Conditional statement (if … then)
– If the condition matches, the action fires
– More rules generally mean more precision
• The use of cases
– Template of problems or situations
– To find the solution of a new case, find similar
old cases and apply result

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 Inference Engine (1)

• Use information and relations to derive new facts

to solve problems or predict possible outcomes
• Main reasoning component
• Find the right facts, apply the right relations, etc.
• Ex: Facts: male(Ali), female(Oya)
• Relations: father(X, Y) => male(X)
• The engine can conclude that Oya cannot be a
father.

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 Inference Engine (2)

• Backward chaining
– You start with conclusions
– You want to find out if you can get to the conclusion
from your facts

• Forward chaining
– You start with facts and try to reach conclusions
– More expensive since it can generate many
conclusions

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 Other Components
• Explanation Facility
– Enables the expert system to explain its reasoning
– Helps the user to judge the expert system
• Knowledge Acquisition Facility
– Get and update knowledge
– Provide a way to capture and store knowledge
– Can be semi-automated
• User Interface
– Help users interact with the system
– Improve usability

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Expert Systems Development

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Participants in Developing and Using
Expert Systems

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 Domain Expert

• Recognize the real problem

• Develop a general framework for problem solving
• Formulate theories about the situation
• Develop and use general rules to solve a problem
• Know when to break the rules or general principles
• Solve problems quickly and efficiently

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 Other participants

• Knowledge Engineer
– Works in design and implementation of the expert
system
– Has considerable information about expert systems
• Knowledge User
– End user who will benefit from the system
– No need to know anything about expert systems
– Can help in testing

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Expert Systems Development
Alternatives

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 Applications of Expert System and
Artificial Intelligence

• Credit granting and loan analysis

• Stock Picking
• Catching cheats and terrorists
– NORA (Non-obvious Relationship Awareness)
• Budgeting

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 Applications of Expert System and
Artificial Intelligence

• Games: Proverb solves crossword puzzles

• Writing: Evaluate and rate writings
• Information management and retrieval
• Virus detection
– Learns the actions of a virus
• Hospitals and medical facilities

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 Virtual Reality

Enables one or more users to move and react in a

computer-simulated environment

• Immersive virtual reality - user becomes fully

immersed in an artificial, three-dimensional world that is
completely generated by a computer

• Virtual reality system - enables one or more users to

move and react in a computer-simulated environment

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 Interface Devices

• Head mounted display (HMD)

• Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor (BOOM)
• CAVE

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The BOOM, a Head-Coupled Display
Device

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Viewing the Detroit Midfield Terminal in an Immersive
CAVE System

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 Useful Applications

• Medicine – used to link stroke patients to physical

therapists

• Education and training – used by military for

aircraft maintenance

• Entertainment
– Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

• Real Estate Marketing and Tourism

– Used to increase real estate sales
– Virtual reality tour of the White House
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 Segway

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 Robotics

• Mechanical or computer devices that can

move autonomously
• Manufacturers use robots to assemble or
paint products
• Asimo in Istanbul: Shake hands, dance
• Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs):
Identify and destroy targets without human
intervention

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 Vision Systems

• Capture, store, manipulate visual images

• Fingerprint analysis: Store a database of
fingerprints and information about the
owners.
• Match a fingerprint with an existing entry in
the database
• Mostly recognize black and white

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 Natural Language Processing

• Understand and react to statements in

natural language
• Three levels of understanding
– Commands
– Discrete
– Continuous
• Talk to a computer; computer converts
languages to commands understandable
by computers
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 Learning Systems

• Change its behavior over time

– Computer takes an action
– User gives feedback
– Based on the feedback, computer modifies its
action
• First train the system; then try on test data
• Amazon.com learns user models as users
browse and buy goods

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 Summary
• Artificial intelligence - used to describe computers with ability to
mimic or duplicate functions of the human brain

• Intelligent behavior - includes the ability to learn from experience

• Expert systems - can explain their reasoning (or suggested

decisions) and display intelligent behavior

• Virtual reality system - enables one or more users to move and

react in a computer-simulated environment

• Special-purpose systems - assist organizations and individuals in

new and exciting ways

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 Principles and Learning Objectives
• Artificial intelligence systems form a broad and diverse set of
systems that can replicate human decision making for certain
types of well-defined problems.

– Define the term artificial intelligence and state the objective of

developing artificial intelligence systems.

– List the characteristics of intelligent behavior and compare the

performance of natural and artificial intelligence systems for each of
these characteristics.

– Identify the major components of the artificial intelligence field and

provide one example of each type of system.

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 Principles and Learning Objectives

• Expert systems can enable a novice to perform

at the level of an expert but must be developed
and maintained very carefully.

– List the characteristics and basic components of

expert systems.
– Outline and briefly explain the steps for developing an
expert system.
– Identify the benefits associated with the use of expert
systems.

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 Principles and Learning Objectives
• Virtual reality systems have the potential to reshape the
interface between people and information technology by
offering new ways to communicate information
creatively.

– Define the term virtual reality and provide three examples of

virtual reality applications.

• Special-purpose systems can help organizations and

individuals achieve their goals.

– Discuss examples of special-purpose systems for organizational

and individual use.

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