At Vanderbilt University we are exploring the use of expert systems in a broad range of application areas. Programming is in Franz Lisp on a VAX 11/790, UCI LISP on a DEC-10, and IQ LISP on an IBM XT. Currently, personnel from four schools in the University are participating. Listed are brief descriptions of current projects.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will have profound societal effects. It promises potential benefits (and may also pose risks) in education, defense, business, law and science. In this article we explore how AI is likely to affect employment and the distribution of income. We argue that AI will indeed reduce drastically the need of human toil. We also note that some people fear the automation of work by machines and the resulting of unemployment. Yet, since the majority of us probably would rather use our time for activities other than our present jobs, we ought thus to greet the work-eliminating consequences of AI enthusiastically. The paper discusses two reasons, one economic and one psychological, for this paradoxical apprehension. We conclude with discussion of problems of moving toward the kind of economy that will be enabled by developments in AI.

The Steamer project is a research effort concerned with exploring the use of AI software and hardware technologies in the implementation of intelligent computer-based training systems. While the project addressed a host of research issues ranging from how people understand complex dynamic systems to the use of intelligent graphical interfaces, it is focused around the construction of a system to assist in propulsion engineering instruction. The purpose of this article is to discuss the underlying ideas which motivated us to initiate the Steamer effort, describe the current status of the project, provide a glimpse of our planned directions for the future, and discuss the implications of Steamer for AI applications in other instructional domains.

Abstract, Editors' Note: In this provocative article Doyle suggests that many of the benefits of current expert systems technology Knowledge engineers qualified to build expert systems are currently in could be achieved without computer-based implementations. Is there not an intermediary position? This revolution is very Namely, that the problems encountered by today's expert important. The views and conclusions contained manpower. The novice still botches the task, but explains in detail of knowledge engineers in the current fashion.

Ellen L. Walker Linda T. Powell counter.

AI technology transfer Is the diffusion of AI research techniques into commercial products. I have been involved in this process since 1975, when the Artificial Intelligence Corporation began to develop ROBOT, the prototype of INTELLECT, a commercially viable natural language interface to data base systems which has been on the market since 1981. In this article, I will discuss AI technology transfer with particular reference to my experiences with the commercialization of INTELLECT. I will begin with the historical perspective of where the field of AI came from, where it is now, and where it is going. Next, I will describe my interpretation of the present market structure for AI products and some specific marketing perspectives. I will then briefly describe the product INTELLECT and its capabilities as an example of a state-of-the-art commercial system. Next, I will describe some of the experiences, which I think are typical, that my company has encountered in commercialize their systems.

Founded early in 1983, the center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford University grew out of a long-standing collaboration between scientists at research laboratories in the Palo Alto area and the faculty and students of several Stanford University departments and out of a need for an institutional focus for this work on natural and computer languages. At present, CSLI has 17 senior members and about as many associate members, from SRI International, Xerox PARC, Fairchild, and the Department of Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy at Stanford. Since the Center's research will overlap with the work of other researchers around the world, an important goal of CSLI is to initiate a major outreach, whereby members of CSLI both inform themselves of work done elsewhere and share their own results with others.

How to Get the Most Out of IJCAI-83 Vol IV, No 1, p 35, Winter-Spring, 1983.

The goal of the Unix Consultant is to provide a natural language help facility that allows new users to learn operating systems conventions in a relatively painless way. UC is not meant to be a substitute for a good operating system command interpreter, but rather, an additional tool at the disposal of the new user, to be used in conjunction with other operating system components.

Most work in automatic programming has focused primarily on the roles of deduction and programming knowledge. However, the role played by knowledge of the task domain seems to be at least as important, both for the usability of an automatic programming system and for the feasibility of building one which works on non-trivial problems. This perspective has evolved during the course of a variety of studies over the last several years, including detailed examination of existing software for a particular domain (quantitative interpretation of oil well logs) and the implementation of an experimental automatic programming system for that domain. The importance of domain knowledge has two important implications: a primary goal of automatic programming research should be to characterize the programming process for specific domains; and a crucial issue to be addressed in these characterizations is the interaction of domain and programming knowledge during program synthesis.