Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!duke!mcnc!ncsu!fostel
From: fostel@ncsu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: RE: Expert Systems
Message-ID: <2420@ncsu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Dec-83 13:51:36 EST
Article-I.D.: ncsu.2420
Posted: Thu Dec  1 13:51:36 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Dec-83 00:12:02 EST
Lines: 49



    Are expert systems new? Different?  Well, how about an example.  Time
    was, to run a computer system, one needed at least one operator to care
    and feed for the system.  This is increasingly handled by sophisticated
    operating systems.  As such is an operating system an "expert system"?

    An OS is usually developed using a style of programming which is quite
    different from those wimpy, unskilled, un-enlightenned applications
    prgrammers.  It would be very hard to build an operating system in the
    applications style.  (I claim).  The people who developed the style and
    practise it to build systems are not usually AI people although I would
    wager the presonality profiles would be quite similar.

    Now, that is I think a major point.  Are there different type of people in
    Physics as compared to Biology?  I would say so, haveing seen some of each.
    Further Biologists do research in ways that seem different (again, this is
    purely ideosynchratic evidence) differently than physists.  Is it that one
    group know how to do science better, or are the fieldds just so differnt,
    or are the people attracted to each just different?

    Now, suppose a team of people got to gether and built an expert system which
    was fully capable of taking over the control of a very sophisticated
    (previously manual, by highly trained people) inventory, billing and
    ordering system.  I claim that this is at least as complex as diagnosis
    of and dosing of particular drugs (e.g. mycin).  My expert system
    was likely written in Cobol by people doing things in quite different ways
    from AI or systems hackers.

    One might want to argue that the productivity was much lower, that the
    result was harder to change and so on.  I would prefer to see this in
    Figures, on proper comparisons.  I suspect that the complexity of the
    commercial software I mentioned is MUCH greater than the usual problem
    attacked by AI people, so that the "productivity" might be comparable,
    with the extra time reflecting the complexity.  For example, designing
    the reports and generating them for a large complex system (and doing
    a good job)  may take a large fraction of the total time, yet such
    reporting is not usually done in the AI world.  Traces of decisions
    and other discourse are not the same.  The latter is easier I think, or
    at least it takes less work.

    What I'm getting at is that expert systems have been around for a long
    time, its only that recently AI people have gotten in to the arena. There
    are other techniques which have been applied to developing these, and
    I am waiting to be convinced that the AI people have a priori superior
    strategies.  I would like to be so convinced and I expect someday to
    be convinced, but then again, I probably also fit the AI personality
    profile so I am rather biased.
    ----GaryFostel----