Overview of artificial intelligence tools

Abstract

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and with the increased interest in applying the new technology to a wide variety of problems, there is a proliferation of software tools marketed for developing knowledge based systems. There are many factors that influence the selection of a tool for a particular project. For example, machine availability, supplier credibility, etc. These factors, though important, are not considered in this chapter. The primary concern of this chapter is to look at the AI aspects of tools and see how they influence tool selection. The objective is, therefore, threefold. First, it describes the AI features that are found in KBS tools. Second, it considers the problem of mapping application characteristics to these tool features. Third, it describes three representative tools that implement some of these features.