Computers can’t do everything humans can do. But they can do some things better than most humans can.
Expert systems can’t do everything human experts can do. But they can do some things human experts can’t.
Expert systems can share expert reasoning and guidance easily and cheaply, with many people. Knowledge engineering can be difficult and time-consuming. But once an expert system’s knowledge base is filled with expertise, it can be used over and over by many non-experts.
The internet makes it possible for any user to access the expert knowledge through any connected device, any time, any place, with low transaction costs. It’s unlikely that all of these things will be true for the non-expert whose only source of guidance is a human expert.
Experts who share their knowledge through an expert system can also benefit. They can be freed up to work on other interesting problems or completely unrelated activities.
Human experts can also benefit from analytics collected by the system about the way high volumes of non-experts are using their knowledge. This data can help the expert expand or deepen their understanding of their domain of expertise.
Expert systems also make it possible to combine different sources of knowledge into a single knowledge base. Expert knowledge can be collected from one, two or many experts and put into action by the same system.
An expert system’s knowledge base can become a powerful knowledge management tool. Experts can load their expertise into the system where it can not only be stored but also made available for interactions and reasoning by non-expert users so long as it represents accurate expertise in that domain.
By continually adding to a knowledge base, the expertise will stay current over the long term.