An Interaction with a Simple Expert System

Experts possess specialized and often valuable knowledge. In their area of expertise, they would expect to be able to solve problems that would defeat most nonexperts and to be able to solve problems faster than the average 

It is estimated that the total number of compounds that might in theory have potential as drugs is of the order of 1040. Although extremely large, this number is not effectively infinite as almost all drugs of therapeutic interest are quite small molecules. 

Biologist I ve been working too hard. I need a break. Expert System Have you chosen where to go  

This is a fairly mundane exchange. You would not need years of experience before you were able to decide for yourself where you should go on a holiday, so there is little commercial potential for an expert system advising overworked biologists on how to spend their summer break. Nevertheless, this simple interaction gives us an early insight into how an expert system appears to the user. The system has provided one half of a conversation, eliciting information from the user through a sequence of focused questions as 

Notice how the conversation above reveals that the system has made an attempt to reason logically by finding out what the user considers to be important before it makes any recommendations. This approach is much more productive than a random search in which the interaction might run as follows  

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