In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.

<artificial intelligence> A computer program that contains a knowledge base and a set of algorithms or rules that infer new facts from knowledge and from incoming data. An expert system is an artificial intelligence application that uses a knowledge base of human expertise to aid in solving problems. The degree of problem solving is based on the quality of the data and rules obtained from the human expert. Expert systems are designed to perform at a human expert level. In practice, they will perform both well below and well above that of an individual expert. The expert system derives its answers by running the knowledge base through an inference engine, a software program that interacts with the user and processes the results from the rules and data in the knowledge base. Expert systems are used in applications such as medical diagnosis, equipment repair, investment analysis, financial, estate and insurance planning, route scheduling for delivery vehicles, contract bidding, counseling for self-service customers, production control and training. [Difference from "knowledge-based system"?] (1996-05-29)