What's the difference between a rule based system and an artificial neural network?

Problem Detail: 

I'm currently doing some reading into AI and up to this point couldn't find a satisfying answer to this question: what's the difference between a rule based system and an artificial neural network?

From my understanding both are trying to do inference based on a variety of different inputs.

Asked By : Rickyfox

Answered By : Yuval Filmus

The difference is vast, although as Dave wrote, the resulting black box might look the same from outside. Rule-based systems are examples of "old style" AI, which uses rules prepared by humans. Neural networks are examples of "new style" AI, whose mechanism is "learned" by the computer using sophisticated algorithms, and as a result, we humans don't really understand why it works. While in some cases rule-based systems could be effective, the general trend in AI has been to switch to machine-learning algorithms such as neural networks, due to their much better performance.

Best Answer from StackOverflow

Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/4972