I've worked on expert systems. I don't agree that they achieve "simulated intelligence". They're preprogrammed with a set of domain-specific rules that are trivially simple by comparison to even relatively simple and small neural networks.
> I don't agree that they achieve "simulated intelligence". They're preprogrammed with a set of domain-specific rules that are trivially simple by comparison to even relatively simple and small neural networks.
This position does not account for fuzzy logic[0] nor an expert system's ability to produce an answer of "I do not know and here is why", which neural networks are incapable of doing.
I am not saying expert systems are "better" than ANNs as both are algorithms having significant value for what they provide. What I am saying is neural networks are pattern-matching algorithms, quite useful in their own right, and do not possess the ability to identify the lack of existence.
No, fuzzy logic doesn't change what I said at all. In terms of intelligence, both of those technologies were at best limited and simplistic attempts at achieving what LLMs have actually achieved.
Comparing the two in 2026 seems like a bit of a joke to me. I'm not saying there's no role in future for traditional expert systems or fuzzy logic (or hand-written code, for that matter), but to claim they're "intelligence" or even "simulated intelligence" implies such a trivial definition of "intelligence" as to make it a useless term.
> an expert system's ability to produce an answer of "I do not know and here is why", which neural networks are incapable of doing.
Why do you believe that? Here's an excerpt from a response I received from Claude tonight:
> "I want to be honest about a limitation: I can't reliably confirm fine construction details — like exactly which sub-assembly is bolted to the spoke flange versus the fixed axle — from a marketing cutaway graphic at typical web resolution. Those images tend to be stylized/exploded-view illustrations meant to show 'there's a battery and a motor in here,' not engineering-accurate cross-sections with clear rotating/stationary boundaries marked."
This is after it examined two images I provided it with, and related it to the discussion we'd been having.
This demonstrates that it can indeed answer "I do not know and here is why", so your idea about what neural networks "are incapable of doing" is clearly incorrect.
And even if I grant your trivial threshold for intelligence, an interaction like that one clearly demonstrates a far superior degree of multi-modal intelligence, reasoning, and understanding that no expert system or fuzzy logic has ever even come close to achieving.
This is incorrect.
Simulated intelligence can and has been encoded explicitly by humans defining rules programmatically in the form of expert systems[0].
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system