ABSTRACT
This methodological – and to some extent historical – chapter focuses on the nature and potential of ES beyond the brief introduction to these systems in Chapter 1, by looking back at their early development and some of their most relevant features. It is structured into four sections: in Section 2.2, the emergence of expert systems is discussed in the context of the development of the field of Artificial Intelligence; in Section 2.3, the typical structure of expert systems is discussed; in Section 2.4 we discuss the “promise” of expert systems and the extent of its fulfillment and, in Section 2.5, we expand the discussion to cover the wider area of so-called Decision Support Systems (DSS).
