8/12/2019 DSS-AI

1/27

Decision and Intelligent Systems

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

2/27

Benefits of Decision and Intelligent

Systems

Dramatically improved business processes

which reduce costs

Better coordination and support for

individuals and groups in the firm

The ability to capture and retain knowledge

that exists in the organization

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

3/27

Measures of the Contribution of

Decision and Intelligent Systems

Improvements in efficiency

Better customer service

Cost savings per project

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

4/27

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

A computer-based system that helps the decision maker

utilize data and models to solve unstructured problems

E.g., a spreadsheet package

DSS can be classified as

data-oriented

provide tools for the manipulation and analysis of data

model-based

generally have some kind of mathematical model of the decision

being supported

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

5/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

6/27

Other DSS Examples

General Motors OnStar

a two-way vehicle satellite communication system offering a number of

services for safety, security and entertainment

GM has an 80% share of the telematics market, and OnStar has a market value

of several billion dollars

Merrill Lynchs Integrated Choice Account Structure

helped design appropriate account structures and pricing for the company

Integrated Choice program

analysis considered the total revenue at risk, estimated what accounts

customers would choose, and the impact of their choice on revenues

Helped the company increase assets and customers

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

7/27

Executive Information Systems (EIS)

EIS bring to senior management information that

needs its attention

summarize data and makes them available for

downloading to a personal computer in theexecutive's office

have an appealing interface and an easy to use system

drill down feature

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

8/27

Group Decision Support Systems

(GDSS)

GDSS consist of special software and physical

facilities such as a conference room containing

PCs for each person in the room

The software helps identify issues and

evaluate alternative decisions and actions

Enable workgroup decision making

Technology-assisted meetings

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

9/27

Intelligent Systems

Turings test for Artificial Intelligence (AI)

place a computer and a human in two separaterooms

an interviewer in a third room, who cannot seethe human or the computer user, asks questionsthat are passed to the computer and to thehuman

if the interviewer cannot tell the differencebetween the answers from the computer and thehuman, the machine is said to exhibit intelligentbehavior

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

10/27

AI Versus Traditional Programs

AI programs manipulate symbols rather than

numbers

AI programs are non-algorithmic often

employing heuristics or rules of thumb

Many AI programs are concerned with pattern

recognition

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

11/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

12/27

Components of Expert Systems

The user interface

a good interface make the system much more pleasant to use and

helps promote its acceptance

The knowledge base For example, the use of rules to represent the experts knowledge

a rule in a knowledge base contains some of the logic of an

application

The inference engine the reasoning part of the expert system

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

13/27

The Inference Engine

Forward chaining involves going through the

rules one at a time to infer the best

recommendation

In backward chaining, the system begins with

a goal and at each stage, the inference engine

establishes sub-goals

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

14/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

15/27

Expert System Development

Prototyping

Learning through test cases

The person designing the system is sometime referred to as

the knowledge engineer

Knowledge engineering is difficult because

experts are not conscious of decision-making steps and have difficulty

explaining their logic

in some cases, experts are reluctant to reveal their expertise to

systems developers

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

16/27

Examples of Expert Systems

AESOP: A System for Stock Options Pricing

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

17/27

Examples of Expert Systems

The Port of Singapore Authority Expert Systems

planning and managing all operations of the port

E.g., allocating berths to ships, planning the stowage of containers,

the allocation of resources in general, and reading container

numbers and operating trucking gates managing shipping traffic and the activities of the port

E.g., assigning ships to anchorages, scheduling the movement of

vessels through channels to terminals, deploying pilots to tugs and

launches, routing launches, and deploying tugboats

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

18/27

Knowledge Discovery

Combines AI with large databases

Knowledge discovery programs look for

patterns in the data and report the results to

the user

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

19/27

Neural Networks

The first neural networks were loosely based

on how the brain functions

The most popular type of such programs is

used to classify input into different categories

A neural network has to be first trained by

presenting it with past cases

After training the network can be used for

classification

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

20/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

21/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

22/27

Case-Based Reasoning

Captures lessons from past experience anduses them to find solutions to a new problem

It is both a problem-solving approach and a

model of how some experts think individualslearn, remember, and think about problems

A CBR needs cases, a similarity index, a case

retrieval mechanism, and an explanationmodule

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

23/27

Genetic Algorithms

Involves generating a population of possible problemsolutions and rating them based on some fitness function

applying a selection function to the un-rated population to select``parents'' for the next generation of solutions

using a reproduction function to generate copies of the parents

The inversion operation reverses the order of randomly selected,contiguous portions of the vector

A point mutation alters a single feature, replacing it with arandomly chosen value

The crossover operator randomly selects a sequence of featuresand swaps them between two parents

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

24/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

25/27

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

26/27

Intelligent Agents

An agent is a piece of software that performs

a task for its owner

involves AI combined with networks

applications for intelligent agents have been for

consumer tasks like shopping and providing

recommendations based on profile matches

8/12/2019 DSS-AI

27/27

Summary

IT can do more than process transactions and

help people communicate

Some of the decision and Intelligent Systems

applications carry high risks but can also leadto substantial rewards