Rule-Based Reasoning
Decision Analysis and Expert Systems
Henrion, Max, Breese, John S., Horvitz, Eric J.
Decision analysis and expert systems are technologies intended to support human reasoning and decision making by formalizing expert knowledge so that it is amenable to mechanized reasoning methods. Despite some common goals, these two paradigms have evolved divergently, with fundamental differences in principle and practice. Recent recognition of the deficiencies of traditional AI techniques for treating uncertainty, coupled with the development of belief nets and influence diagrams, is stimulating renewed enthusiasm among AI researchers in probabilistic reasoning and decision analysis. We present the key ideas of decision analysis and review recent research and applications that aim toward a marriage of these two paradigms. This work combines decision-analytic methods for structuring and encoding uncertain knowledge and preferences with computational techniques from AI for knowledge representation, inference, and explanation. We end by outlining remaining research issues to fully develop the potential of this enterprise.
An Overview of Some Recent and Current Research in the AI Lab at Arizona State University
Findler, Nicholas V., Sengupta, Uttam
The applications include the user-advised construction of an assembly line balancing system and a self-optimizing street light control system. The generalized production-rule strategy that is better than any other at Arizona State University. The estimation is based on for the decision maker to respond to. The system can serve as a module simulation models. of an expert system in need of numeric Figure 1 shows the or functional estimates of hiddenvariable Mazur, Robert F. geographically distributed input Cromp, Bede McCall, operations and knowledge bases. Bickmore, Jan van been in the area of forecasting and Leeuwen, Joรฃo Martins, interpolating econometric indicators.
Logical Versus Analogical or Symbolic Versus Connectionist or Neat Versus Scruffy
Engineering and scientific education condition us to expect everything, including intelligence, to have a simple, compact explanation. Accordingly, when people new to AI ask "What's AI all about," they seem to expect an answer that defines AI in terms of a few basic mathematical laws. Today, some researchers who seek a simple, compact explanation hope that systems modeled on neural nets or some other connectionist idea will quickly overtake more traditional systems based on symbol manipulation. Others believe that symbol manipulation, with a history that goes back millennia, remains the only viable approach. Marvin Minsky subscribes to neither of these extremist views. Instead, he argues that AI must use many approaches. AI is not like circuit theory and electromagnetism. There is nothing wonderfully unifying like Kirchhoff's laws are to circuit theory or Maxwell's equations are to electromagnetism. Instead of looking for a "right way," the time has come to build systems out of diverse components, some connectionist and some symbolic, each with its own diverse justification." - Patrick Winston
Controlling a Black-Box Simulation of a Spacecraft
Sammut, Claude, Michie, Donald
This article reports on experiments performed using a black-box simulation of a spacecraft. The goal of this research is to learn to control the attitude of an orbiting satellite. The space-craft must be able to operate with minimal human supervision. To this end, we are investigating the possibility of using adaptive controllers for such tasks. Laboratory tests have suggested that rule-based methods can be more robust than systems developed using traditional control theory. The BOXES learning system, which has already met with success in simulated laboratory tasks, is an effective design framework for this new exercise.