What is an expert system?

What is an expert system? What are technical components? Give example of expert system application in business. What are potential benefits of expert system application? What are major challenges?

According to Wikipedia, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision making ability of a human expert. This means they use knowledge to solve problems other than using procedures that are programmed by a programmer. They have artificial intelligence. The technical components of an expert system have two parts. There is one that is fixed which is completely separated from the expert system which is the inference engine and the other one is the knowledge base. They can do everything from answering questions or having a conversation with the human user.

They use If/then languages to express themselves. The inference engine uses logic. According to Wikipedia, there are several types of logic: propositional logic, predicates of order 1 or more, epistemic logic, modal logic, temporal logic, fuzzy logic and more. Most of them are all understood by mathematicians expect propositional logic which is understood by humans.

An application in business would having an expert system help a business's customer troubleshoot a problem they are having. For example, if Dell used an expert system, a customer would have instantaneous help instead of waiting for a representative to answer their phone. They can use a conversational program and the user can ask, "How do I turn on my computer." Then the expert system can reply, plug in the computer and press the power button." Then they can go through a list of suggestions if the user cannot figure out why their computer will not turn on.

The potential benefits of expert system applications are endless. If it is developed sophisticated enough, it can save companies money on hiring people for services such as call centers for computer troubleshooting.The expert system will act more like a human and give logical solutions instead of leading the person through troublesome procedures and steps.

One of the major challenges with expert systems is that they cannot cope with change. They cannot think and cope as well as humans do in those situations.