ABSTRACT
Expert systems appear in some ways to be the “classic” application of Artificial Intelligence. An expert system is a kind of personal advisor that engages the user in a conversation with the aim of providing help on a specialist topic. In sophisticated systems, the interaction between the expert system (ES) software and the user may be so natural that the user almost forgets that it is a computer rather than a human that is holding up the other end of the conversation. As developers of an ES usually do their best to create software that can participate in “intelligent” conversations, in order to enhance the user’s confidence in the system, expert systems can seem the most human and friendly side of AI.
