inference engine

inference engine

A program that infers new facts from known facts using inference rules. Commonly found as part of a Prolog interpreter, expert system or knowledge based system.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

inference engine

An inference engine makes a decision from the facts and rules contained in the knowledge base of an expert system or the algorithm derived from a deep learning AI system. The inference engine is the processing component in contrast to the fact gathering or learning side of the system.

In years past, the inference engine referred to software-only expert systems. Today, there are specialized chips for executing in parallel the enormous number of calculations in a neural network, which is the primary AI architecture. See neural network, deep learning and expert system.

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