expert systems

Another boom, this time over “expert systems,” materialized in the early 1980s, but had faded by the end of the decade.

The process eliminates most of the need for hand coding knowledge into a computer, a crippling handicap of the old expert systems.

There was a resurgence of A.I. research in the 1980s, fueled by advances in computer memory and processing speed and the development of expert systems, followed by a second A.I. winter as the limitations of expert systems became apparent.

Study after study has shown that people who deeply believe in conspiracy theories are less likely to vote, less likely to vaccinate their children, have dwindling levels of trust in government and expert systems, and are generally unlikely to donate money or volunteer.

Unlike so-called expert systems like IBM’s Watson, which are loaded with human and scientific knowledge, neural networks are designed to learn as they go, similarly to the way human brains do.