Knowledge Engineering: The Applied Side of Artificial Intelligence.

Expert System research in an emerging area of computer science that exploits the capabilities of computers for symbolic manipulation and inference to solve complex and difficult reasoning problems at the level of performance of human experts. The methods of this area are designed to acquire and represent both the formal and the informal knowledge that experts hold about the tasks of their discipline. Numerous applications to science, engineering, and medicine have been accomplished. Expert System projects represent applied artificial intelligence research, though they also make salient numerous fundamental research issues in the acquisition, representation and utilization of knowledge by computer programs. Knowledge engineering approaches promise significant cost savings in certain applications intelligent computer-based aids for practitioners in fields whose knowledge is primarily nonmathematical and the elucidation of the heuristic knowledge of experts -- the largely private knowledge of practice. There are major problems of knowledge engineering including the shortage of adequate computer equipment, the shortage of trained specialists in applied artificial intelligence, the scientific base for adequate knowledge acquisition, and the lack of sustained funding. Author