Positive and negative effects expert systems can have on the internet
Positive
Unlike humans expert systems can provide consistent responses for repetitive requests, while a human may change their mind and provide a different response.
It can also hold a huge amount of information; this is an advantage because if 5 human experts create the system it will hold a great deal more knowledge than just one expert.
Negative
There is one major disadvantage of Expert systems on the internet, as of yet, it is impossible to program common sense into a program. Because of this it is possible for the expert system to give an inappropriate response.
Human expert responses have a chance of being creative, say if it’s a rare circumstance the expert system has never heard of, the human expect can improvise and be creative.
Sometimes allowing people access to these kinds of expert systems can cause undue alarm, for example if someone diagnoses themselves using a medical expert system and it gives the wrong answer, the patient will be unnecessarily worried.
References:
Wikipedia (2007) [Online] “Expert System”,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system
[Last accessed 3 rd of May 2007]
PortBlue Corporation. [No date][Online] “What are expert Systems?”,
http://www.portblue.com/what-are-expert-systems
[Last accessed 3 rd of May 2007]