The impact of machine learning on expert systems

Expert systems are a well-known and well-received technology. It was thought that the performance of a domain expert could not be duplicated by a machine. Expert systems technologies have shown this to be a false belief, and indeed have demonstrated how experts themselves can come to depend on expert systems. Expert systems enjoy widespread use in industrial domains and further uses are planned. The growth in acceptance has been explosive since about 1986. Continued rampant growth appears to depend on cracking the so-called knowledge acquisition bottleneck. The knowledge acquisition bottleneck limits the scalability of expert systems. While it is relatively straightforward to populate a small-scale knowledge base, it becomes more difficult to maintain consistency and validity as the knowledge base grows. Thus, it is important to automate the knowledge acquisition process. A by-product of this process is that any failure of the expert system will be “soft.” The question is, “What impact can machine learning technologies have on knowledge acquisition in the large?” The true test will be on prospective industrial applications in areas such as biology, education, geology, medicine, and scientific discovery. Machine learning technologies include expert systems, genetic algorithms, neural networks, random seeded crystal learning, or any effective combinations. Relevant subtopics include: Second generation expert systems — progress and prognosis Repertory Grids The importance of symbolic and qualitative reasoning The acquisition of fuzzy rules The best learning paradigm or combination of paradigms Impact of machine learning on explanation systems The role of toy domains such as chess Automatic programming revisited Applications to computer vision, decision support systems, diagnosis, helpdesks, optimization, planning, scheduling, et al. Implementation issues using SIMD and MIMD platforms Sources for joint sponsorship Forming industrial partnerships Forming alliances abroad