ABSTRACT
Computers in artificial intelligence (AI) have a radically different viewpoint from traditional computer science, and even from much of business data processing, because they are considered not as numeric calculators but rather as symbol processors. Probably the most commercially successful field within AI is that of expert systems. Expert systems have been used to function in a variety of tasks such as interpreting, predicting, diagnosing, designing, planning, monitoring, debugging, repairing, teaching, and controlling. Systems performing each of these tasks are already in existence. When deciding on the purchase of an expert system or on its design, one has to know about the five basic components of any expert system. These are: knowledge base of rules and facts; inference engine for reasoning; knowledge acquisition module; explanation subsystem; and appropriate user interface. Software tools for building expert systems are divided into two separate, but related, categories—programming languages and development tools.
