In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code. The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated in the 1980s. Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of artificial intelligence (AI) software, and as such are also known as the Fifth Generation Computer Systems (the initiative by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, that begun in 1982, to create a computer using massively parallel computing/processing). The term "fifth generation" was intended to convey the system as being a leap beyond existing machines.