Gerstner Laboratory

for Intelligent Decision Making and Control

Expert Systems I

Michal Pěchouček

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Expert System Functionality
• replace human expert decision making when not available
• assist human expert when integrating various decisions
• provides an ES user with
– an appropriate hypothesis
– methodology for knowledge storage and reuse
• border field to Knowledge Based Systems,
Knowledge Management
• knowledge intensive × connectionist
• expert system – software systems simulating expert-like
decision making while keeping knowledge separate
from the reasoning mechanism
Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Expert Systems Classification
• Unlike classical problem solver (GPS, Theorist)
Expert Systems are weak, less general, very case
specific
• Exert systems classification: – Monitoring
– Interpretation – Repair &
– Prediction Debugging
– Diagnostic – Instruction
– Design & Configuration – Control
– Planning

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Underlying Philosophy
• knowledge representation
– production rules
– logic
– semantic networks
– frames, scripts, objects
• reasoning mechanism
– knowledge-oriented reasoning
– model-based reasoning
– case-based reasonig

Gerstner Laboratory
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Expert System Architecture

knowledge knowledge
base base editor

inference user
engine

world
preceptors
model

explanation
subsystem

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Rule-Based System
• knowledge in the form of if condition then effect
(production) rules
• reasoning algorithm:
(i) FR ← detect(WM)
(ii) R ← select(FR)
(iii) WM ← apply R
(iv) goto (i)
• conflicts in FR:
– first, last recently used, minimal WM change,
priorities
• incomplete WM – querying ES (art of logical and
sensible querying)
• Gerstner Laboratory
examples – CLIPS (OPS/5), Prolog for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Rule-Based System Example
here → fine ? here → no
not here → absent
? seen → no
absent and not seen → at home
absent and seen → in the building ? holiday → no
in the building → fine sick
at home and not holiday → sick
here and holiday → sick
? here → yes
fine

not here, in the building → fine ? here → yes

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Data-driven × Goal-driven

here seen holiday

data driven

absent

building
home

goal driven

fine sick

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Data-driven × Goal-driven
• goal driven (backward chaining) ~ blood diagnostic,
theorem proving
– limited number of goal hypothesis
– data shall be acquired, complicated data about
the object
– less operators to start with at the goal rather than
at the data
• data driven (forward chaining) ~ configuration,
interpretation,
– reasonable set of input data
– data are given at the initial state
– huge set of possible hypothesis Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Knowledge Representation in ES
• Knowledge Models
Shallow
– rules, frames, logic, networks
– first generation expert systems
• Deep Knowledge Models
– describes complete systems causality
– second generation expert systems
• Case Knowledge Models
– specifies precedent in past decision making

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Model Based Reasoning
• Sometimes it is either impossible or imprecise to
describe the domain in terms of rules …
• Here we use a predictive computational model of the
domain object in order to represent more theoretical
deep knowledge model
• Model is based either on
– quantitative reasoning (differential equations, …)
– qualitative reasoning (emphasizes some
properties while ignoring other)
• Very much used for model diagnosis and intelligent
tutoring

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
Qualitative Reasoning
• is based on symbolic computation
Qualitative Reasoning
aimed at modeling of behavior of physical systems
– commonsense inference mechanisms
– partial, incomplete or uncertain information
– simple, tractable computation
– declarative knowledge
• QR Techniques:
– Constrain based – Qualitative Simulation QSIM
– Component based – Envision
– Process based – QPT (Qualitative Process Theory)

Gerstner Laboratory
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QSIM – A Constraints Based Approach
• Qualitative system is described by parameters, domains and
constraints (relations among parameters)
• is thus only breath-first-search in the
Qualitative simulation
space of possible combination of values of the
parameters
• Qualitative behaviour is thus a path in the tree from the
initial state to some leaf state
• The structure of the system model is given in the
form of qualitative equation consisting of constraints:
– arithmetic – add(A,B,C),mult(A,B,C)
– derivative – der(height, velocity)
– monotonicity – M+(wrinkle,age) M-
(hunger,consumption)
Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control
QSIM – A Constraints Based Approach
• of each parameter is a couple:
Qualitative State
{value,direction} where value can be either an interval
or landmark value and direction may be inc
(increasing), dec (increasing) or std (steady)
• Qualitative Reasoning Procedure:
(i) wm ← initial state
(ii) succ ← find-successors of first(wm)
(iii) succ ← filter(succ)
(iv) wm ← wm – first(wm) + succ
• Filtering:
pairwise consistency, redundancy, cycles,
termination condition, logical direction of change,
qualitative magnitude change
Gerstner Laboratory
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QSIM – A Pendulum Example
• system description: der(v,a) and der(s,v)
• domains: a = {min,〈min,0〉,0,〈0,max〉,max}
v = {min,〈min,0〉,0,〈0,max〉,max}
s = {0,〈0,max〉,max}
max,st
s 0,std +,inc +,inc +,inc
d
max,st
v 0,std +,inc +,dec 0,std
d
max,st
a +,dec 0,std -,dec min,std
d

max,st
s +,dec +,dec +,dec 0,std
d
v 0,std -,dec min,std -,inc 0,std

a min,std -,inc 0,std +,inc min,std

a
v
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Case Based Reasoning
• part of the machine learning lecture
• Algorithms:
– problem attributes description
– retrieval of previous case
– solution modification
– testing new solution
– repairing failure or inclusion into the plan library
• Utilized widely in law domain (Judge)

Gerstner Laboratory
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Knowledge Evolution

• Strong- result of application of the

s tro n g u p d a te 's t r o n g ' u p d a t e

in f e r e n c e d e c is io n
I L P e x c e p tio n F ilt e r s g ra p h EBG
r u le s

w e a k u p d a te w e a k u p d a te

Gerstner Laboratory
for Intelligent Decision Making and Control