Welcome to the special winter vacation column “High-Tech Lessons for Kids” launched by Science Popularization China!
Artificial intelligence, as one of today’s cutting-edge technologies, is changing our lives at an astonishing pace. From smart voice assistants to self-driving cars, from AI painting to machine learning, it opens up a future full of infinite possibilities. This column will explain the principles, applications, and profound impacts of artificial intelligence on society in an easily understandable way through videos and text for children.
Let’s embark on this AI journey together!
First, let’s watch the video:
Below is the text version:
(Reading takes about 1 minute)
Expert System
An expert system is an important branch of early artificial intelligence. It can be viewed as a computer program that possesses specialized knowledge in a particular field. An expert system generally consists of two parts: a knowledge base and an inference engine.
The knowledge base contains a large amount of foundational knowledge in a specific domain, while the inference engine can reason about problems based on existing knowledge and given logical rules to produce results.
Expert systems emerged in the 1960s. In 1965, a professor from Stanford University developed an expert system in the field of chemistry, which recorded a vast amount of chemical component information and could deduce the molecular formula of compounds based on mass spectrometry data.
However, expert systems also have significant drawbacks; they cannot autonomously upgrade their knowledge bases. Moreover, if there are any errors in the foundational knowledge or reasoning logic, it can lead to incorrect conclusions.
Additionally, in many fields, it is impossible to provide accurate and complete definitions of knowledge and concepts, making it difficult to establish a comprehensive knowledge base.
As a result, expert systems were gradually replaced by neural networks.