Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!inria!imag!bondono
From: bondono@imag.UUCP (Philippe Bondono)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Can you sue an expert system?
Message-ID: <2366@imag.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 87 13:42:54 GMT
References: <1788@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: bondono@imag.UUCP (Philippe Bondono)
Organization: IMAG, University of Grenoble, France
Lines: 51

In article <1788@cup.portal.com> Barry_A_Stevens@cup.portal.com writes:
>
>Consider, and please comment on, this scenario.
>
>                     * * * * * * * * * * *
>
>A well-respected, well-established expert systems(ES) company constructs
>an expert financial advisory system. The firm employs the top ES
>applications specialists in the country. The system is constructed with
>help from the top domain experts in the financial services industry. It
>is exhaustively tested, including verification of rules, verification of
>reasoning, and further analyses to establish the system's overall value.
>All results are excellent, and the system is offered for sale.

No comment on this point: I am very trustful in expert systems (I must be so,
in fact, since I am working in that field), nevertheless, I think that the two
most important features of expert systems are:
1) their capacity to verify the consistency of their database(s), and
2) the domain they are concerned with.

>By now, you know the outcome. On the Friday morning before Black Monday,
>the expert system tells Joe to "sell everything he has and go into the
>stock market." ESs can usually explain their actions, and Joe asks for
>an explanation. The ES replies "because ... it's only been going UP for
>the past five years and there are NO PROBLEMS IN SIGHT."

The expert system was right: it made a deduction from the knowledge it was fed
on with!
But the real problem is the domain of expertise, more precisely the suitability
of an expert system in a particular field.
It seems to me quite unreasonable to build an expert system for financial
advice, since this field is continuously in evolution. Moreover, for the
particular problem of stock market, it is neither a question of months, nor of
days: it is a question of hours!
Everybody knows that stock market is particularly precarious, since it can
easily go up or down, depending on "abstract" parameters, such as feelings, or
interpretations of official people's declarations (remember the effect of
Reagan's declarations!), or even the fact that one is tense!
This kind of knowledge cannot be modeled, at least till now, in an expert system
database.
This was to say that the problem is not whether or not to start a discussion on
qualities/drawbacks of expert systems, but rather on what kind of field is
suitable for building expert systems.

______________________________________________________________________________
Meryem MARZOUKI
Laboratoire TIM3/IMAG INPG - 46 avenue Felix VIALLET
38031 Grenoble Cedex - FRANCE
e-mail marzouki@archi.uucp
"my tailor is rich, but my english is poor!"
______________________________________________________________________________