Knowledge-Based Systems

 Assoc. Prof. Osama Fathy

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 Lecture 1: Overview

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 Text Book & References

Text Books
 Rajendra Akerkar; Priti Srinivas Sajja, Knowledge based Systems,
Jones & Bartlett Pub, last edition.
 Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Joseph C. Giarratano
Gary D. Riley, PWS Publishing Company, last edition

References
 Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3ed Ed., Stuart Russell,
Peter Norvig, ISBN-10: 0136042597, ISBN-13 or 9780136042594,
Prentice Hall, last edition
 Prolog: programming for artificial intelligent, Ivan Bratko, Addison
Wesley, last edition
 Introduction to Expert Systems, Ignizio, James, McGraw-Hill, 1991

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 Course Assessment Rubric

Course Activity Points

Quizzes (Quiz-1) and (Quiz-2) (Theoretical) 10%
Class Interaction 5%
Project 15%
Midterm Exam (Theoretical) 30%
Final Exam (Theoretical) 40%
Total** 100%
** 5% Bonus for Class Interaction

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Topics
 Basic Definitions
 What is knowledge?
 Areas of interest in AI
 Artificial Intelligence & KB Systems
 How is knowledge organized and represented?
 Comparison between Human Expertise and
Artificial Expertise
 Structure of a KBS
 Advantages and disadvantages of KBS
 Some examples
5
 Overview of the course
 This course is about Knowledge-Based
Systems (KBSs), Or
 about applied artificial intelligence

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 Some answers to the questions:
 What is an Artificial Intelligence?
 Why is AI difficult?
 What might we realistically expect AI to do for us?
 What is the future of AI?

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 Basic Definitions
Artificial
Produced by human art or effort, rather than
originating naturally.

Intelligence
Quickness of understanding, wisdom

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 Basic Definitions
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
The part of Computer Science concerned with
developing intelligent computer program.

Domain Expert (D.E.)

A person who through years of training and
experience has become extremely professional
at problem solving in a particular domain.

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 Basic Definitions
A Knowledge-Based System (KBS)
is a computer program that reasons and uses
a knowledge base to solve complex problems

Knowledge Engineer (KE)

The person who designs and builds the KBS

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 Basic Definitions
KBS System (KBS Building Tools)
The programming languages or support packages
(shell) that are used to build the KBS

End User (user)

Is the person who uses the finished KBS or the
person for whom the system was developed.

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 Basic Definitions
Knowledge Engineering
The process of building the KBS

Tool Builder
The person who designs and builds the tool.

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 Knowledge
 Knowledge includes:
 facts, concepts, procedures, models,
heuristics, examples.
 Knowledge may be:
 specific or general
 exact or fuzzy
 procedural or declarative

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 Areas of interest in AI:
• Mundane Tasks
• Formal Tasks
• Expert tasks

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 Areas of interest in AI:
Mundane Tasks:
1. Perception
» Vision, Speech
2. Natural Language
» Understanding, Generation, Translation
3. Common-sense reasoning
» “Reasoning about physical objects and their
relationships to each other” or “Reasoning
about actions and their consequences”.
4. Robot control
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 Areas of interest in AI:
Formal Tasks
1. game playing
Chess, Go, Checkers, Backgammon
2. Mathematics
Geometry, Integral Calculus, Logic, Proving
properties of program

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 Areas of interest in AI:
Expert tasks
1. Engineering
Design, Fault finding, Manufacturing planning
2. Medical diagnosis
3. Financial analysis
4. Scientific analysis
5. Military analysis

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Artificial Intelligence & KB Systems

Computer
Robotics Vision
NLP

Artificial
Speech
Recognition Intelligence
Pattern
Recognition
ANN
KBS/ES

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 How is knowledge organized and represented?

Meta
Knowledge

Knowledge

Information

Data

Noise

AI requires Knowledge
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 Meta Knowledge:
Knowledge, which represents very specialized
information, i.e. Knowledge about knowledge

Knowledge:
The information a computer must have to behave
intelligently. This information can take the form of
facts, or rules.

Information:
Processed data

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 Data:
Are items of potential interest, processed data are
information which is of interest

Noise:
Consisting of items that are of no interest which
obscure data, or something has no meaning

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 Data, Information and knowledge

10°C
10 10°C It’s cold
temperature

NOISE DATA INFORMATION KNOWLEDGE

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Example:
meaningless
137178766832525156430015 Noise

meaning

Data
• Group the numbers by twos.
Use Algorithm • Ignore any two-digit numbers less than 32.
• Substitute the ASCII characters for the two-
digit numbers. GOLD 439+
Information

Use Rule IF gold is less than 500

and the price is rising ( + ) THEN buy gold
Knowledge

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 Transferring knowledge from Domain
Expert into KBS

Queries & Problems

Domain Knowledge
builds
Expert Engineer KBS

Answers & Solutions

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?- Who is involved in KBS building.
Tool Domain
Builder Expert

Builds
Interviews
Extends & tests

Expert System Knowledge

Building Tools Uses
Engineer

Builds, refines & tests

Clerical Adds KBS

Staff data

Uses

End User
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 Comparison between Human
Expertise and Artificial Expertise.

H.E. (advantages) A.E. (disadvantages)

- creative - uninspired
- adaptive - need to be told
- sensory expertise - symbolic input
- broad focus - narrow focus
- common sense K. - technical K.

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 Comparison between Human
Expertise and Artificial Expertise.

H.E. (disadvantages) A.E. (advantages)

- perishable - permanent
- difficult - easy
- difficult document - easy
- unpredictable - affordable

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Members of the KBS development team:

 Domain expert
 Knowledge engineer
 Programmer
 Project manager
 End-user

The success of developing KBS entirely depends on

how well members work together

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 Structure of a KBS

Explanation Case Specific

System Data

User Inference
Interface Engine Knowledge
User Base (KB)
KB Editor

Shell Domain specific

knowledge

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 KBS Structure
1. Explanation System
Which allows the program to explain its reasoning
(conclusion) to user.

2. KB Editor
Which helps the expert or the K.E. to easily
update and check the K.B. rules.

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 KBS Structure
3. Inference Engine
It contains the general problem solving K., its
structure depends on the nature of the
problem domain and the way in which K. is
represented and generated.

4. Knowledge Base (KB)

• The portion of the KBS that contains the
domain K.

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 KBS Structure
Note that:
 The inference engine and knowledge base are

separated because:
 The reasoning mechanism needs to be as stable

as possible;
 The KB must be able to grow and change, as

knowledge is added;
 This arrangement enables the system to be built

from, or converted to, a shell.

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 KBS Types
 The inference engine and knowledge base are
separated because:
 Expert systems

 Neural networks (NNs)

 Case-based reasoning (CBR)

 Genetic algorithms

 Intelligent agents

 Data mining.

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 Knowledge Representation

Knowledge can be represented as:

• Production Rules,
• Scripts,
• OAV,
• Semantic Networks,
• Frames,
• Predicate Logic,
• ANN
• ………

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 RBS, ES and KBS
If K (Expertise) is represented in the form of:
 Production Rules: (If ----- then -----) 
Rule Based System (RBS)

 Represented in any form 

Expert System (ES)

 Facts + Rules represented in any form 

Knowledge Based System (KBS)

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 Fundamental Topics in KBS
 Acquiring Knowledge
 Extracting, transferring and transforming of the
potential problem-solving expertise from some
knowledge source into a program

 Representing Knowledge
 Logical, conceptual scheme of how knowledge
is stored and associated in human brain

 Controlling Reasoning
 How knowledge is accessed & applied

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 Fundamental Topics in KBS/ES (cont'd)
 Explaining the solutions
 Users want to make sure that program's

conclusions are correct

 Knowledge engineers make sure that

knowledge is properly applied

 Domain experts to see how their knowledge is

applied
 Programmers to debug KBS

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 What is Knowledge Engineering?
 Is the process of building an KBS
 Is the developing a large quantity of effective
knowledge (i.e. the KB)
 Is the acquisition of knowledge from a human
expert or other source and coding it in the KBS
 Is important process, because performance of an
KBS is largely determined by the quantity and
the quality of knowledge in its KB

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 Advantages of KBS/ES
 Increased availability
 expertise available on suitable hardware

 mass production of expertise

 Reduced cost
 cost of providing expertise per user is lowered

 Reduced danger
 KBS can be used in hazardous environment

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 Advantages of KBS
 Permanence
 expertise is permanent, human expert may
retire/quit
 Multiple expertise
 combining expertise of multiple experts

 Increase reliability
 2nd opinion assisting human expert

 Explanation
 explicitly explain how conclusion is reached

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 Advantages of KBS
 Fast response
 Depending on software & hardware, real-

time KBS response faster than human expert

 Steady, unemotional & complete response
 KBS has no problem of stress/ fatigue

 Intelligent tutor
 Student runs sample programs, KBS explains

system's reasoning

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 Disadvantages of KBS
 Developing a KBS usually costs a great deal of
time and money
 Historically, there has been a high failure rate in
KBS projects
 The project may well fail during development
most likely during the “knowledge
acquisition” phase.
 The development may succeed, but the
organisation may fail to accept and use the
finished system.
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 Disadvantages of KBS
 A human expert can update his/her knowledge
in the light of :
 Common sense
 Knowledge derived from other domain
 Contacts with other experts.

An KBS can’t.

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 Some KBS Tasks
 Interpretation
 high-level description from collections of data

 e.g. interpret information supplied by the blood

cell analyser
 Prediction
 consequences of situations

 e.g. storm forecasting

 Diagnosis
 Finding cause of malfunctions

 e.g. medical/car diagnosis

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 Some KBS Tasks (cont'd)
 Design
 Configuring components subject to constraints

 e.g. computer configuration

 Planning
 Sequence of actions to achieve goal

 e.g. schedule tasks of a manufacturing process

 Monitoring
 Comparing observed & predicted behaviour

 e.g. patient monitoring in an intensive case unit

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 Some KBS Tasks (cont'd)
 Debugging & repair
 Remedying failures

 e.g. recommend the sequence of steps to repair

a computer
 Control
 Operating complex environment

 e.g. nuclear power station control

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 KBS Examples
 MYCIN
 Diagnosis of bacterial infection

 DENDRAL
 Determine structure of molecules from mass
spectrograms
 XCON/R1
 Configuration of VAX computers

 TIGER
 Monitors the condition of gas turbines

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 KBS Examples
 METEOR
 Forecasts short term severe storms

 VM
 Monitors condition of patients in ICU

 DIET
 Assists dietitians in prescription of an
appropriate diet
 EVIDENT
 Determines the admissibility of evidence under
US federal rules

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