New research on expert systems

All Al programs are essentially reasoning programs. And, to the extent that they reason well about a problem area, all exhibit some expertise at problem solving. Programs that solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, for example, reason about the goal state and the initial state in order to find'expert-level' solutions. Unlike other programs, however, the claims about expert systems are related to questions of usefulness and understandability as well as performance. We can distinguish expert systems from other Al programs in the following respects: Utility Performance Transparency Designers of expert systems are motivated to build useful tools in addition to constructing programs that serve as vehicles for AI research.