Cmgt 556 Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

CMGT 556

University of Phoenix

Andrew Nash

September 16th, 2015

By Scott Schuelke

     Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), a term that has more than one meaning and often is found when referring to animating and bringing to life machines with a killer attitude; such examples include the Terminator, iRobot and the Day the Earth Stood Still. Artificial intelligence doesn’t always have to be meant as a bad term about robots that don’t follow fames writer Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, matter of fact there are multiple categories of artificial intelligence in the world today. Expert systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms, intelligent agents and virtual reality are five of the categories under the term of artificial intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the good points of these A.I. systems to show how they can add value in the business decision making.

Expert Systems

     An expert system is a computer systems that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert (Wikipedia, “Expert System”). Every expert system is made up of two principal parts: the knowledge base and the reasoning, or inference engine (Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence, May 1993). In a business environment expert systems are used in place of human experts to make business decisions. These systems are the most common form of artificial intelligence in business, they are limited to the subject that is built into the knowledge base and can help to fill the gap between a user and a human expert. Some of the benefits to an expert system can be based on factors that compare the system to the human expert, the system is always available, can be replaced, can be used anywhere and provide consistent information. A human expert is localized to a specific area, is available sometimes, provides less than consistent information and can’t be replaced. An example of an early expert system that was designed for the treatment of blood infections. The system would attempt to diagnose patients based on reported symptoms and medical test results (Mycin, Britannica.com).

Neural Networks

     As it has been demonstrated in multiple movies neural networks seem to be the pathway to evil killer robots. Neural Networks, are the artificial pathways that try to emulate the way the human brain works. The use of a neural network is designed to adapt, react and learn from the information and the users using the system. Neural networks are capable of handling large volumes of information that are not complete and can extract information through the detection of patterns and trends that are not noticeable to most humans and other computer techniques. The use of the neural network functioning like a human brain allows the system to be like an expert system but allows it to learn from the information rather than simply rely on the information in its knowledge base as Expert Systems do. A popular version of a neural network was recently created at Stanford where a team that helped to develop Google’s project Glass. The project an attempt to create a larger neural network that created a neural network 6.5 times larger than Google’s. This neural network can model mathematically the way the biological brains work, allowing the machine to learn to think in the same ways that humans do(Popular Science, Ferro).