Artificial intelligence is not throwing out all the conventions and methods of software development we’ve understood over the previous half-a-century, several of them. 

Rule-based artificial intelligence frameworks take a page out of the playbook of rule-based expert system development, which utilized the knowledge of human specialists to find solutions to complicated issues by reasoning through bodies of knowledge. Expert systems propped up in the 1970s and 1980s.  

The knowledge would be indicated through if-then-else rules over procedural code. Expert systems were thought of as successful forms of preliminary artificial intelligence. 

Present rule-based AI frameworks consist of a set of rules and a grouping of facts, described in a latest account in BecomingHuman/Medium. “You can produce a basic AI framework with the assistance of these two components,” the piece states. 

Leveraging a machine learning strategy, the system goes about defining its own set of rules on the basis of patterns it observes in information. The machine learning framework evolves and adapts on an ongoing basis, and on the basis of training data streams, reliant on models that leverage statistics. Machine learning models usually need extra data in comparison to rule-based models.  

The ideal projects for rule-based models are when the output is required quickly or machine learning is viewed of as being too error prone. The ideal projects for machine learning models are the ones with a quick pace of change and tough to boil down to a grouping of set rules. 

A somewhat samey view was put forth by Jeff Grisenthwaite, Vice President of Product at Catalytic, an organization providing a workflow automation “no code” platform, in an interview released in the Catalytic blog. “With ML, the computer programs can figure out by themselves how to ideally accomplish those objectives and can self-sufficiently evolve as they take in an increased amount of data and experience the outcomes of different scenarios,” he specified. 

“With rules-based frameworks, people define the logic for how the program renders decisions”, he stated, leveraging the instance of a job recruitment program that disqualifies prospective staff with less than half-a-decade of experience. If a machine learning strategy was leveraged to assess job candidates, the program would review a big set of training data that consists of instances of when candidates were qualified or disqualified. “The program would go about identifying patterns and apply its judgment to fresh data that is incoming, deciding a priority ranking of the incoming job candidates,” Grisenthwaite specified. 

With regards to when to leverage a rules-based approach or a machine-learning strategy, Grisenthwaite indicated machine learning as only being relevant when thousands of relevant information records are available for making precise predictions. This could consist of sales lead qualifications, client support auto responses, and scenarios that have several factors that mean more columns in a data set. 

Machine learning “is better equipped to detect patterns in the data than questioning people to both identify the patterns and manually develop rules for each of them,” Grisenthwaite specified. An instance of this would be algorithms that forecast real-estate pricing, on the basis of a review of historical sales pricing and factors which include locality, square footage, and amenities. Also, for quickly-changing environments like e-commerce recommendations and sales forecasting, “Machine learning defeats rules-based systems,” he specified. 

Rules-based systems are apt to applications that require reduced volumes of data and very direct rules. Instances include expense report approvals that define dollar thresholds that need management approvals at several levels, or email routing that leverages a list of keywords to decide the destination. 

Some systems bring together rules-based with machine learning. One Catalytic client in the ad business leverages a rules-based framework to search through a library of answers to historical questions on requisitions for proposal forms. The responses viewed of as more relevant in that filtered library are subsequently scanned by a machine learning algorithm to forecast the best answer to every question. 

“Bringing together rules-based systems with machine learning enables every approach to make up for the pitfalls of the other,” specifies Grisenthwaite. 

The AI universe can be divided in machine learning or rules-based 

One perspective is that the “entire universe of AI can be divided into these two groups” of rules-based strategies and machine-learning strategies, indicates an account from Tricentis, supplier of a software evaluation framework based on artificial intelligence. 

The authors additionally stated, “A computer system that accomplishes AI through a machine learning strategy is referred to as a learning system” And the objective of a rules-based system is to get the knowledge of a human specialist in a particular field and personify it within a computer system. 

“That’s it. So let’s view rules-based systems as the most rudimentary form of AI,” the authors specified, restricted by the size of its foundational knowledge base, therefore implementing a “narrow AI”. 

A dilemma with regards to rules-based systems is the difficulties connected to putting in additional rules to a big knowledge base with no introduction of contradictory rules. “The upkeep of these systems then commonly becomes too time-intensive and costly,” the authors specified. As an outcome, rules-based systems are less useful for finding solutions to issues in complicated fields or across several simplistic domains. 

Another issue with machine learning frameworks is that the internal functioning of the system cannot be extracted, having the outcome of a black box, a lack of insight into how the system made its decision. “This is a dominant problem for a majority of applications”, the authors specify. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, for instance, needs that applications for credit must be supplied particular reasons for actions undertaken. 

A variation of the issues posed by black-box decision-making is the experience of scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, in application of a learning system to the hospital’s database of records on approximately 700,000 persons. The outcome learning system, referred to as Deep Patient, happened to be very competent at forecasting illness. It even seemed to predict the onset of psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, which is tough for doctors to forecast, quite well. “Deep Patient provides no clue as to how it does this” state the authors, referencing Joel Dudley, prior leader of the Mount Sinai team, currently Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus Labs, which progresses precision medicine via the practical application of artificial intelligence in medical care. 

“We can develop these models, but we are not aware how they function” Dudley stated.