ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERT SYSTEM
1. History of AI
The seed of AI were sown only two years after General Electric installed the first computer for business use. The year was 1956, and the term artificial intelligence (AI) was coined by john McCarthy as the theme of a conference held at Dartmouth College . That same year, the first AI computer program, called Logic Theorist was announced. Logic Theorist’s limited ability to the reason (proving calculus theorems) encourage researchers to develop another program called the General Problem Solver (GPS), which was intended to solve problems of all kinds. The task turned out to be more then the early pioneers could handle.
AI research continued, but it took backseat to the less ambitious computer applications such as MIS and DSS. Over time, however, persistent research continued to push back the frontiers of using the computer for tasks that normally require human intelligence.
2. Areas of AI
AI is currently being applied in business in the form of knowledge systems, which use human knowledge to solve problems. The most popular type of knowledge-based system is the expert system. An expert system is a computer program that attempts to represent the knowledge of human expert in the form of heuristics is derived from the same Greek root as the word eureka, which means “to discover”. A heuristic is, therefore, a rule of good guessing.
Heuristics do not guarantee results as absolutely as do conventional algorithms that are incorporated into DSSs, but they offer results that are specific enough most of the time to be useful. The heuristics allow the expert system to function in a manner consistent with a human expert, advising the user on how to solve a problem. Since the expert system functions as a consultant, the act of using it is called a consultation--the user consults the expert system for advice.

人工智能與專家系統(tǒng)
1．AI（人工智能）發(fā)展史
僅僅在通用電器公司開始將電腦應用于商業(yè)領域之后兩年，即1956年，就出現(xiàn)了人工智能。人工智能這一術語是由John McCarthy在Ddartmouth大學的學術論壇上提出的。同年，第一個人工智能計算程序——Logic Theorist誕生了。Logic Theorist在推理方面的局限促使了研究人員開發(fā)另一個程序，那就是GPS(通用問題求解程序)。其目的是為了解決各種各樣的問題，其解決問題的能力比前幾代更強。
AI研究仍在繼續(xù)，但與MIS和DDS等計算機應用相比，研究熱情的減弱使人工智能的研究相對落后。然而，在研究方面的不斷努力一定會推動計算機向人工智能化方向發(fā)展。
2．AI領域
AI現(xiàn)在已經以知識系統(tǒng)的形式應用于商業(yè)領域，既利用人類知識來解決問題。專家系統(tǒng)是最流行的基于知識的系統(tǒng)，他是應用計算機程序以啟發(fā)方式替代專家知識。Heuristic術語來自希臘eureka，意思是“探索”。因此，啟發(fā)方式是一種良好猜想的規(guī)則。
啟發(fā)式方法并不能保證其結果如同DSS系統(tǒng)中傳統(tǒng)的算法那樣絕對化。但是啟發(fā)式方法提供的結果非常具體 ，以至于能適應于大部分情況啟發(fā)式方法允許專家系統(tǒng)能像專家那樣工作，建議用戶如何解決問題。因為專家系統(tǒng)被當作顧問，所以，應用專家系統(tǒng)就可以被稱為咨詢。
除了專家系統(tǒng)外，AI還包括以下領域：神經網絡系統(tǒng)、感知系統(tǒng)、學習系統(tǒng)、機器人、AI硬件、自然語言處理。注意這些領域有交叉，交叉部分也就意味著這個領域可以從另一個領域中收益。