Rules for Knowledge Representation

One way to represent knowledge is by using rules that express what must happen or what
does happen when certain conditions are met.
Rules are usually expressed in the form of IF . . . THEN . . . statements, such as: IF A THEN
B This can be considered to have a similar logical meaning as the following: A→B

A is called the antecedent and B is the consequent in this statement.

In expressing rules, the consequent usually takes the form of an action or a conclusion.
In other words, the purpose of a rule is usually to tell a system (such as an expert system)
what to do in certain circumstances, or what conclusions to draw from a set of inputs about
the current situation.

In general, a rule can have more than one antecedent, usually combined either by AND or by
OR (logically the same as the operators ∧ and ∨).
In general, the antecedent of a rule compares an object with a possible value, using an
operator.
For example, suitable antecedents in a rule might be
IF x > 3
IF name is “Bob”

IF weather is cold

Here, the objects being considered are x, name, and weather; the operators are “>” and “is”,
and the values are 3, “Bob,” and cold.
Note that an object is not necessarily an object in the real-world sense—the weather is not a
real world object, but rather a state or condition of the world.
An object in this sense is simply a variable that represents some physical object or state in the
real world.
An example of a rule might be

IF name is “Bob”

AND weather is cold

THEN tell Bob ‘Wear a coat’

This is an example of a recommendation rule, which takes a set of inputsand gives advice as a
result.
The conclusion of the rule is actually an action, and the action takes the form of a
recommendation to Bob that he should wear a coat.
In some cases, the rules provide more definite actions such as “move left” or “close door,” in
which case the rules are being used to represent directives.
Rules can also be used to represent relations such as:

IF temperature is below 0

THEN weather is cold

Expert Systems
An expert system is a computer program that is
designed to solve complex problems and to
provide decision-making ability like a human
expert. It performs this by extracting knowledge
from its knowledge base using the reasoning and
inference rules according to the user queries.

Characteristics of Expert System

o High Performance: The expert system

provides high performance for solving any
type of complex problem of a specific domain
with high efficiency and accuracy.
o Understandable: It responds in a way that can
be easily understandable by the user. It can
take input in human language and provides
the output in the same way.
 o Reliable: It is much reliable for generating an
efficient and accurate output.
o Highly responsive: ES provides the result for
any complex query within a very short period
of time.

Components of Expert System

An expert system mainly consists of three
components:

o User Interface
o Inference Engine
o Knowledge Base
1. User Interface
With the help of a user interface, the expert system
interacts with the user, takes queries as an input in
a readable format, and passes it to the inference
engine. After getting the response from the
inference engine, it displays the output to the user.
In other words, it is an interface that helps a
non-expert user to communicate with the
expert system to find a solution.

2. Inference Engine(Rules of Engine)

o The inference engine is known as the brain of
the expert system as it is the main processing
 unit of the system. It applies inference rules to
the knowledge base to derive a conclusion or
deduce new information. It helps in deriving an
error-free solution of queries asked by the
user.
o With the help of an inference engine, the
system extracts the knowledge from the
knowledge base.
o There are two types of inference engine:
o Deterministic Inference engine: The
conclusions drawn from this type of inference
engine are assumed to be true. It is based
on facts and rules.
o Probabilistic Inference engine: This type of
inference engine contains uncertainty in
conclusions, and based on the probability.

Inference engine uses the below modes to derive

the solutions:

o Forward Chaining: It starts from the known

facts and rules, and applies the inference rules
to add their conclusion to the known facts.
 o Backward Chaining: It is a backward
reasoning method that starts from the goal
and works backward to prove the known facts.

3. Knowledge Base
o The knowledgebase is a type of storage that
stores knowledge acquired from the different
experts of the particular domain. It is
considered as big storage of knowledge. The
more the knowledge base, the more precise
will be the Expert System.
o It is similar to a database that contains
information and rules of a particular domain or
subject.
o One can also view the knowledge base as
collections of objects and their attributes. Such
as a Lion is an object and its attributes are it is
a mammal, it is not a domestic animal, etc.

Components of Knowledge Base

 o Factual Knowledge: The knowledge which is
based on facts and accepted by knowledge
engineers comes under factual knowledge.
o Heuristic Knowledge: This knowledge is
based on practice, the ability to guess,
evaluation, and experiences.

Why Expert System?

need of the ES:

1. No memory Limitations: It can store as much

data as required and can memorize it at the
 time of its application. But for human experts,
there are some limitations to memorize all
things at every time.
2. High Efficiency: If the knowledge base is
updated with the correct knowledge, then it
provides a highly efficient output, which may
not be possible for a human.
3. Expertise in a domain: There are lots of
human experts in each domain, and they all
have different skills, different experiences, and
different skills, so it is not easy to get a final
output for the query. But if we put the
knowledge gained from human experts into
the expert system, then it provides an efficient
output by mixing all the facts and knowledge
4. Not affected by emotions: These systems are
not affected by human emotions such as
fatigue, anger, depression, anxiety, etc.. Hence
the performance remains constant.
5. High security: These systems provide high
security to resolve any query.
 6. Considers all the facts: To respond to any
query, it checks and considers all the available
facts and provides the result accordingly. But it
is possible that a human expert may not
consider some facts due to any reason.
7. Regular updates improve the
performance: If there is an issue in the result
provided by the expert systems, we can
improve the performance of the system by
updating the knowledge base.

Capabilities of the Expert

System
Below are some capabilities of an Expert System:

o Advising: It is capable of advising the human

being for the query of any domain from the
particular ES.
o Provide decision-making capabilities: It
provides the capability of decision making in
any domain, such as for making any financial
decision, decisions in medical science, etc.
 o Demonstrate a device: It is capable of
demonstrating any new products such as its
features, specifications, how to use that
product, etc.
o Problem-solving: It has problem-solving
capabilities.
o Explaining a problem: It is also capable of
providing a detailed description of an input
problem.
o Interpreting the input: It is capable of
interpreting the input given by the user.
o Predicting results: It can be used for the
prediction of a result.
o Diagnosis: An ES designed for the medical
field is capable of diagnosing a disease
without using multiple components as it
already contains various inbuilt medical tools.

Advantages of Expert System

o These systems are highly reproducible.
 o They can be used for risky places where the
human presence is not safe.
o Error possibilities are less if the KB contains
correct knowledge.
o The performance of these systems remains
steady as it is not affected by emotions,
tension, or fatigue.
o They provide a very high speed to respond to
a particular query.

Limitations of Expert System

o The response of the expert system may get
wrong if the knowledge base contains the
wrong information.
o Like a human being, it cannot produce a
creative output for different scenarios.
o Its maintenance and development costs are
very high.
o Knowledge acquisition for designing is much
difficult.
 o For each domain, we require a specific ES,
which is one of the big limitations.
o It cannot learn from itself and hence requires
manual updates.

Applications of Expert System

o In designing and manufacturing domain
It can be broadly used for designing and
manufacturing physical devices such as camera
lenses and automobiles.
o In the knowledge domain
These systems are primarily used for
publishing the relevant knowledge to the
users. The two popular ES used for this domain
is an advisor and a tax advisor.
o In the finance domain
In the finance industries, it is used to detect
any type of possible fraud, suspicious activity,
and advise bankers that if they should provide
loans for business or not.
o In the diagnosis and troubleshooting of
devices
 In medical diagnosis, the ES system is used,
and it was the first area where these systems
were used.
o Planning and Scheduling
The expert systems can also be used for
planning and scheduling some particular tasks
for achieving the goal of that task.

Knowledge engineering

A knowledge engineer is an expert in AI

language and knowledge representation
who investigates a particular problem
domain, determines important concepts, and
creates correct and efficient representations
of the objects and relations in the domain.

Knowledge engineering systems can assist

with the following tasks:
 troubleshooting
 solving issues
 assisting a human
 acting as a virtual agent
Knowledge engineering generally involves
these five steps:
1. Knowledge is gathered from various
sources, such as text, human experts, big
data repositories and sensors.
2. Knowledge is verified using test
cases that human experts run to ensure
they're correct.
3. Knowledge is organized, encoded and
provided in a knowledge base.
4. Software makes inferences based on the
organized and encoded knowledge.
5. An explanation is devised to explain the
basis for a certain conclusion.
The most important step in the process is to
ensure that the knowledge base is accurate
and timely. Another important aspect of the
knowledge engineering process is to have a
human agent who ensures the system is
doing its job. The engineer will develop rules
for the system so it functions like a human
and reaches the same conclusions as a
human expert.
EXPERT SYSTEM LIFE CYCLE

KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

Knowledge acquisition is the gathering or collecting knowledge from various

sources. It is the process of adding new knowledge to a knowledge base and
refining or improving knowledge that was previously acquired. Acquisition is
the process of expanding the capabilities of a system or improving its
performance at some specified task. So it is the goal oriented creation and
refinement of knowledge. Acquired knowledge may consist of facts, rules,
concepts, procedures, heuristics, formulas, relationships, statistics or any other
useful information. Source of these knowledges may be experts in the domain
of interest, text books, technical papers, database reports, journals and the
environments. The knowledge acquisition is a continuous process and is spread
over entire lifetime. Example of knowledge acquisition is machine learning. It
may be process of autonomous knowledge creation or refinements through the
use of computer programs. The newly acquired knowledge should be integrated
with existing knowledge in some meaningful way. The knowledge should be
accurate, non-redundant, consistent and fairly complete. Knowledge acquisition
supports the activities like entering the knowledge and maintaining knowledge
base. The knowledge acquisition process also sets dynamic data structures for
existing knowledge to refine the knowledge.

The role of knowledge engineer is also very important with respect to develop
the refinements of knowledge. Knowledge engineers may be the professionals
who elicit knowledge from experts. They integrate knowledge from various
sources like creates and edits code, operates the various interactive tools, build
the knowledge base etc.
Figure Knowledge Engineer’s Roles in Interactive Knowledge Acquisition

Knowledge Acquisition Techniques

Many techniques have been developed to deduce knowledge from an expert.

They are termed as knowledge acquisition techniques. They are:

a) Diagram Based Techniques

 b) Matrix Based Techniques

c) Hierarchy-Generation Techniques

d) Protocol Analysis Techniques

e) Protocol Generation Techniques

f) Sorting Techniques

In diagram based techniques the generation and use of concept maps, event
diagrams and process maps. This technique captures the features like “why, whe
n, who, how and where”. The matrix based techniques involve the construction
of grids indicating such things as problems encountered against possible
solutions. Hierarchical techniques are used to build hierarchical structures like
trees. Protocol analysis technique is used to identify the type of knowledge like
goals, decisions, relationships etc. The protocol generation techniques include
various types of interviews like structured, semi-structured and unstructured.
The most common knowledge acquisition technique is face-to-face interview.
Interview is a very important technique which must be planned carefully. The
results of an interview must be verified and validated. Some common variations
of an unstructured interview are talk through, teach through and read through.
The knowledge engineer slowly learns about the problem. Then can build a
representation of the knowledge. In unstructured interviews, seldom provides
complete or well-organized descriptions of cognitive processes because the
domains are generally complex. The experts usually find it very difficult to
express some more important knowledge. Data acquired are often unrelated,
exists at varying levels of complexity, and are difficult for the knowledge
engineer to review, interpret and integrate. But on the other hand structured
interviews are systematic goal oriented process. It forces an organized
communication between the knowledge engineer and the expert. In structured
interview, inter personal communication and analytical skills are important.

What are tools for an expert system?

The three main toolkits in the marketplace
are KEE (Knowledge Engineering
Environment), ART (Automated Reasoning
Tool), and Knowledge Craft. KEE was the first in
the field and is therefore the most used of the
three