production system
In plain wordsA program built from many 'if this, then do that' rules plus a memory of current facts; it repeatedly finds a rule whose 'if' part matches and carries out its 'then' part.
A computational architecture consisting of a set of condition–action rules (productions), a working memory of facts or goals, and an interpreter that runs a recognize–act cycle: match every rule's conditions against working memory, choose one matching instantiation by a conflict-resolution strategy (such as recency, specificity or rule priority), execute its actions — adding, deleting or modifying working-memory elements or producing output — and repeat until no rule applies. Production systems underlie rule-basedrule-based system, n.: A computer system that makes decisions by following a list of 'if… then…' rules written by people, rather than by learning from examples. expert systemsexpert system, n.: A program that stores a human specialist's know-how as many if–then rules and uses them to give advice or make decisions in a narrow field, such as diagnosing infections or configuring computers. and cognitive architecturescognitive architecture, n.: A blueprint for a complete thinking system — how memory, attention, learning and decision-making fit together — used both to build general AI agents and to model how the human mind works. such as Soar and ACT-R. Charles Forgy's Rete algorithm made matching fast by compiling rules into a network that caches partial matches, enabling languages such as OPS5 and CLIPS and today's business-rules engines.
The configurator is a production system of about 10,000 rules running on a Rete engine.
Origin
Emil Post introduced 'productions' as string-rewriting rules in 1943. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon adopted production systems as models of human cognition from the late 1960s, culminating in Human Problem Solving (1972), and the formalism became the backbone of expert systems in the 1970s and 1980s.
Usage note
Not to be confused with a system 'in production', the engineering sense of software deployed to real users.
Related
- rule-based systemrule-based system, n.: A computer system that makes decisions by following a list of 'if… then…' rules written by people, rather than by learning from examples.
- inference engineinference engine, n.: The part of an AI system that does the working-out: in older AI, the program that applies rules to facts; in today's AI, the software that runs a trained model to produce answers.
- forward chainingforward chaining, n.: A way of reasoning that starts from known facts and keeps applying rules to them, adding each new conclusion, until it reaches an answer or nothing new can be concluded.
- expert systemexpert system, n.: A program that stores a human specialist's know-how as many if–then rules and uses them to give advice or make decisions in a narrow field, such as diagnosing infections or configuring computers.
- cognitive architecturecognitive architecture, n.: A blueprint for a complete thinking system — how memory, attention, learning and decision-making fit together — used both to build general AI agents and to model how the human mind works.
- Allen NewellAllen Newell, prop. n.: An American computer scientist who, with Herbert Simon, wrote early AI programs that solved problems the way people do, and who sought a single theory of how the mind works.
Sources
- Newell, A. & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human Problem Solving. Prentice-Hall.
- Forgy, C. L. (1982). Rete: A Fast Algorithm for the Many Pattern/Many Object Pattern Match Problem. Artificial Intelligence 19(1), 17–37.
Mentioned in
Allen NewellAllen Newell, prop. n.: An American computer scientist who, with Herbert Simon, wrote early AI programs that solved problems the way people do, and who sought a single theory of how the mind works., forward chainingforward chaining, n.: A way of reasoning that starts from known facts and keeps applying rules to them, adding each new conclusion, until it reaches an answer or nothing new can be concluded., rule-based systemrule-based system, n.: A computer system that makes decisions by following a list of 'if… then…' rules written by people, rather than by learning from examples., blackboard systemblackboard system, n.: A design for AI programs that lets many independent specialist modules collaborate only through a shared workspace: each watches it, posts a piece of the answer when it sees a chance, and builds on what others posted., cognitive architecturecognitive architecture, n.: A blueprint for a complete thinking system — how memory, attention, learning and decision-making fit together — used both to build general AI agents and to model how the human mind works., XCONXCON, prop. n.: A rule-based program used from 1980 by the computer maker Digital Equipment Corporation to work out which parts each customer's computer order needed. It was the first big commercial success of expert systems.