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Fig. 1.3. Artificial thought model
1.10 Knowledge Based Systems
An important impetus for AI research is to construct knowledge based systems to
automatically solve difficult problems. Ever since the 1980's, knowledge
engineering has become the most remarkable characteristic of AI applications.
Knowledge based systems (KBS) include expert system, knowledge base system,
intelligent decision support system, etc. In 1965, DENDRAL, which was
designed to illustrate organic chemistry structures, developed to a series of expert
system programs. Such systems mainly include two parts: one is the knowledge
base, which represents and stores the set of task-related specific domain
knowledge, including not only facts about the related domain, but also heuristic
knowledge in expert level; the other is the inference engine, which includes
series of inference methodologies to retrieve the reasoning path, and thus to form
premises, satisfy objectives, solve problems, etc. As different mechanisms and
concepts can be adopted, the inference engines have multiple patterns.
In knowledge based systems knowledge will be stored in the computer in
defined structure for knowledge management, problem solving and knowledge
sharing. Projects and softwares of “Knowledge Based Management System
(KBMS)” have been initiated and developed all over the world, such as in
America, in Japan (the NTT Company), as well as in China. Remarkable