Topic 175

responsibility for the performance of an expert system—knowledge engineer, informant, programmer, company that sold it, the buyer/consumer by Nitish

Let us define a few terms before proceeding –

Expert System

- A software system with two basic components: a knowledge base and an inference engine. The system mimics an expert's reasoning process.

- A type of application program that makes decisions or solves problems in a particular field by using knowledge and analytical rules defined by experts in the field.

Knowledge Base –

A collection of facts, rules, and procedures organized into schemas. The assembly of all the information and knowledge of a specific field of interest.

This paper is about responsibility for the performance of an expert system. To what extent do knowledge engineers, programmers, companies, buyers and informants have responsibility towards an expert system?

1) Knowledge engineering (KE) refers to the building, maintaining and development of knowledge-based systems. It has a great deal in common with software engineering, and is related to many computer science domains such as artificial intelligence, databases, data mining, expert systems, decision support systems and geographic information systems. (WIKI)
The knowledge engineer thus, builds, maintains and develops the knowledge based systems. He has a big responsibility in the ‘health’, progress, work, durability and many other factors of the expert system.

2) An informant (sometimes informer) is someone existing inside a closed system who provides information of that system to a figure or organization who exist outside of that system. (WIKI)

Here, we are talking about a person who informs and gives information to (supposedly) engineers, buyers, sellers, etc. He has a responsibility in spreading information and distributing it.

3) A programmer or software developer is someone who programs computers, that is, one who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. (WIKI)

A programmer has a big responsibility in the ‘purpose’ of the system. He programs the whole expert system, maintains it, and basically, builds the software. His job is to see to it that the system works fine and does the work it is intended to do. He is in contrast with the knowledge engineer.

4) The Company that sold it has a responsibility in deciding the economic factors, the profit and the loss. It is also responsible for the copyright as well as the ownership of the system. It decides where the system goes, where it is used, how it is used, etc.

5) The Buyer/Consumer has a responsibility in handling the system. It will call a programmer, or ask the previous programmer who programmed it into working to do as they want it to do. They will have control over the expert system, and decide the purpose and use of it.