Intelligent Systems

Knowledge vs Intelligence

Knowledge is the collection of

skills and information a person/machine
has acquired through experience.
Intelligence is the ability to
apply knowledge.

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Intelligent systems (IS):
▪ Systems that use AI algorithms.
▪ Also called
▪ Machine intelligence or computational
intelligence
▪ Agent-based systems
▪ AI effect
???

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What is an intelligent system?

▪ What is intelligence?
▪ Hard to define unless you list characteristics eg,
▪ Reasoning
▪ Learning
▪ Adaptivity

▪ A truly intelligent system adapts itself to deal with

changes in problems (automatic learning)

▪ Few machines can do that at present

▪ Machine intelligence has a computer follow problem

solving processes something like that in humans

▪ Intelligent systems display machine-level intelligence,

reasoning, often learning, not necessarily self-adapting
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IS Introduction
▪ IS Models often use analogies of human
problem solving
▪ IS models can be based upon physical
organisations
▪ But Machines may not problem solve like
humans

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AI vs Automation
▪ There are pretty big differences between Intelligent
Systems and Automated Systems. Automation is
basically making a hardware or software that is capable
of doing things automatically — without human
intervention (e.g. repeated task).

▪ Artificial Intelligence, however, is a science and

engineering of making intelligent machines (according
to John McCarthy, person who coined this term). AI is
all about trying to make machines or software mimic,
and eventually supersede human behaviour and
intelligence. 13
Intelligent systems in business
▪ Intelligent systems in business utilise one or more intelligence
tools, usually to aid decision making
▪ Provides business intelligence to
▪ Increase productivity
▪ Gain competitive advantage
▪ Examples of business intelligence – information on
▪ Customer behaviour patterns
▪ Market trend
▪ Efficiency bottlenecks
▪ Examples of successful intelligent systems applications in
business:
▪ Customer service (Customer Relations Modelling)
▪ Scheduling (eg Mine Operations)
▪ Data mining
▪ Financial market prediction
▪ Quality control

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Intelligent systems in business –
some examples
▪ HNC (now Fair Isaac) software’s credit card fraud detector Falcon
offers 30-70% improvement over existing methods (an example of
a neural network).

▪ MetLife insurance uses automated extraction of information from

applications in MITA (an example of language technology use)

▪ Personalized, Internet-based TV listings (an intelligent agent)

▪ Hyundai’s development apartment construction plans

FASTrak-Apt (a Case Based Reasoning project)

▪ US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA uses

"expert advisors" to help identify fire and other safety hazards at
work sites (an expert system).
Source: http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16430.html 15
Characteristics of intelligent
systems
▪ Possess one or more of these:
▪ Capability to extract and store knowledge
▪ Human like reasoning process
▪ Learning from experience (or training)
▪ Dealing with imprecise expressions of facts
▪ Finding solutions through processes similar to natural evolution

▪ Recent trend
▪ More sophisticated Interaction with the user through
▪ natural language understanding
▪ speech recognition and synthesis
▪ image analysis

▪ Most current intelligent systems are based on

▪ rule based expert systems
▪ one or more of the methodologies belonging to soft computing

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The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
▪ Primary goal:
▪ Development of software aimed at enabling machines to solve
problems through human-like reasoning

▪ Attempts to build systems based on a model of knowledge

representation and processing in the human mind

▪ Encompasses study of the brain to understand its structure and

functions

▪ In existence as a discipline since 1956

▪ Failed to live up to initial expectations due to

▪ inadequate understanding of intelligence, brain function
▪ complexity of problems to be solved

▪ Expert systems – an AI success story of the 80s 17

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The Soft Computing (SC) paradigm
▪ Also known as Computational Intelligence

▪ Unlike conventional computing, SC techniques

1. can be tolerant of imprecise, incomplete or corrupt input data

2. solve problems without explicit solution steps

3. learn the solution through repeated observation and

adaptation

4. can handle information expressed in vague linguistic terms

5. arrive at an acceptable solution through evolution 19

The Soft Computing (SC) paradigm
(cont’d)

▪ The first four characteristics are common in

problem solving by individual humans
▪ The fifth characteristic (evolution) is common in
nature
▪ The predominant SC methodologies found in
current intelligent systems are:
▪ Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
▪ Fuzzy Systems
▪ Genetic Algorithms (GA)
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Overview of Intelligent System
Methodologies
- Expert Systems (ES)
▪ Designed to solve problems in a specific domain,
▪ eg, an ES to assist foreign currency traders

▪ Built by
▪ interrogating domain experts
▪ storing acquired knowledge in a form suitable for solving
problems, using simple reasoning

▪ Used by
▪ Querying the user for problem-specific information
▪ Using the information to draw inferences from the knowledge
base
▪ Supplies answers or suggested ways to collect further inputs
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Overview of Expert Systems (cont’d)

▪ Usual form of the expert system knowledge

base is a collection of IF … THEN … rules
▪ Note: not IF statements in procedural code
▪ Some areas of ES application:
▪ banking and finance (credit assessment, project
viability)
▪ maintenance (diagnosis of machine faults)
▪ retail (suggest optimal purchasing pattern)
▪ emergency services (equipment configuration)
▪ law (application of law in complex scenarios)
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Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
▪ Human brain consists of 100 billion densely interconnected simple
processing elements known as neurons

▪ ANNs are based on a simplified model of the neurons and their

operation

▪ ANNs usually learn from experience – repeated presentation of

example problems with their corresponding solutions

▪ After learning the ANN is able to solve problems, even with newish
input

▪ The learning phase may or may not involve human intervention

(supervised vs unsupervised learning)

▪ The problem solving 'model' developed remains implicit and

unknown to the user
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▪ Particularly suitable for problems not prone to algorithmic
Artificial Neural Networks (cont’d)

▪ Different models of ANNs depending on

▪ Architecture
▪ learning method
▪ other operational characteristics (eg type of activation function)

▪ Good at pattern recognition and classification problems

▪ Major strength - ability to handle previously unseen, incomplete or

corrupted data

▪ Some application examples:

- explosive detection at airports
- face recognition
- financial risk assessment
- optimisation and scheduling

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Genetic Algorithms (GA)

▪ Belongs to a broader field known as evolutionary computation

▪ Solution obtained by evolving solutions through a process

consisting of
▪ survival of the fittest
▪ crossbreeding, and
▪ mutation

▪ A population of candidate solutions is initialised (the

chromosomes)

▪ New generations of solutions are produced beginning with the

intial population, using specific genetic operations: selection,
crossover and mutation

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Genetic Algorithms (cont’d)
▪ Next generation of solutions produced from the current population
using
▪ crossover (splicing and joining peices of the solution from parents) and
▪ mutation (random change in the parameters defining the solution)

▪ The fitness of newly evolved solution evaluated using a fitness

function

▪ The steps of solution generation and evaluation continue until an

acceptable solution is found

▪ GAs have been used in

▪ portfolio optimisation
▪ bankruptcy prediction
▪ financial forecasting
▪ design of jet engines
▪ scheduling

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Fuzzy Systems

▪ Traditional logic is two-valued – any proposition is

either true or false

▪ Problem solving in real-life must deal with partially true

or partially false propositions

▪ Imposing precision may be difficult and lead to less

than optimal solutions

▪ Fuzzy systems handle imprecise information by

assigning degrees of truth - using fuzzy logic

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Fuzzy Systems (cont’d)

▪ FL allow us to express knowledge in vague linguistic

terms

▪ Flexibility and power of fuzzy systems now well

recognised (eg simplification of rules in control systems
where imprecision is found)

▪ Some applications of fuzzy systems:

▪ Control of manufacturing processes
▪ appliances such as air conditioners, washing machines and
video cameras
▪ Used in combination with other intelligent system
methodologies to develop hybrid fuzzy-expert, neuro-fuzzy,
or fuzzy-GA systems
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Case-based reasoning (CBR)

▪ CBR systems solve problems by making use of knowledge about

similar problems encountered in the past

▪ The knowledge used in the past is built up as a case-base

▪ CBR systems search the case-base for cases with attributes

similar to given problem

▪ A solution created by synthesizing similar cases, and adjusting to

cater for differences between given problem and similar cases

▪ Difficult to do well in practice, but very powerful if you can do it

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Case-based reasoning (cont’d)

▪ CBR systems can improve over time by learning from

mistakes made with past problems

▪ Application examples:
▪ Utilisation of shop floor expertise in aircraft repairs
▪ Legal reasoning
▪ Dispute mediation
▪ Data mining
▪ Fault diagnosis
▪ Scheduling

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Data mining

▪ The process of exploring and analysing data for

discovering new and useful information

▪ Huge volumes of mostly point-of-sale (POS) data are

generated or captured electronically every day, eg,
▪ data generated by bar code scanners
▪ customer call detail databases
▪ web log files in e-commerce etc.

▪ Organizations are ending up with huge amounts of

mostly day-to-day transaction data

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Data mining (cont’d)
▪ It is possible to extract useful information on market and customer
behaviour by “mining" the data

▪ Note: This goes far beyond simple statistical analysis of numerical

data, to classification and analysis of non-numerical data

▪ Such information might

▪ reveal important underlying trends and associations in market
behaviour, and
▪ help gain competitive advantage by improving marketing
effectiveness

▪ Techniques such as artificial neural networks and decision trees

have made it possible to perform data mining involving large
volumes of data (from "data warehouses").

▪ Growing interest in applying data mining in areas such direct

target marketing campaigns, fraud detection, and development of
models to aid in financial predictions, antiterrorism systems 32
Intelligent software agents (ISA)

▪ ISAs are computer programs that provide active assistance to

information system users

▪ Help users cope with information overload

▪ Act in many ways like a personal assistant to the user by

attempting to adapt to the specific needs of the user

▪ Capable of learning from the user as well as other intelligent

software agents

▪ Application examples:
▪ News and Email Collection,
Filtering and Management
▪ Online Shopping
▪ Event Notification
▪ Personal scheduling 33
▪ Online help desks, interactive characters
Language Technology (LT)
▪ “[The] application of knowledge about human language in
computer-based solutions” (Dale 2004)

▪ Communication between people and computers is an important

aspect of any intelligent information system

▪ Applications of LT:
▪ Natural Language Processing (NLP)
▪ Knowledge Representation
▪ Speech recognition
▪ Optical character recognition (OCR)
▪ Handwriting recognition
▪ Machine translation
▪ Text summarisation
▪ Speech synthesis Hi, I am Cybelle.
What is your name?

▪ A LT-based system can be the front-end of

information systems themselves based on
other intelligence tools 34
For Next Week

▪ Get hold of the textbook

▪ Visit the library and find the section on
artificial intelligence, browse some titles
▪ Get onto the unit website, download and
read papers concerning Expert Systems
▪ We will study the theory and practice
developing a simple expert system
▪ Have a look at the AAAI Applications
webpage at
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/applications.html
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