The two-volume set entitled "Knowledge-Based Systems (Volume 1, Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems, 355 pp., and Volume 2, "Knowledge Acquisition Tools for Expert Systems, 343 pp., Academic Press, San Diego, California, 1988), edited by B. R. Gaines and J. H. Boose, is an excellent collection of papers useful to both commercial practitioners of knowledge-based-systems development and research-oriented scientists at specialized centers or academic institutions.

Letters to the Editor.

Nevertheless, significant aspects of behavior and user expectation are peculiar to expert systems and their users. These considerations are discussed here with examples from an actual system. Guidelines for the behavior of expert systems and the responsibility of designers to their users are proposed.

Review of The Development of an Artificial Intelligence System for Inventory Management Using Multiple Experts

This article records the results of an experiment in which a survey of AI and expert systems (ES) literature was attempted using Science Citation Indexes. The survey identified a sample of authors and institutions that have had a significant impact on the historical development of AI and ES. However, it also identified several glaring problems with using Science Citation Indexes as a method of comprehensively studying a body of scientific research. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned against using the results presented here to conclude that author A is a better or worse AI researcher than author B.

Problem-solving techniques such as modeling, simulation, optimization, and network analysis have been used extensively to help agricultural scientists and practitioners understand and control biological systems. Many of the models and simulations that have been developed lack a user interface which enables people other than the developer to use them. As a result, several scientists are integrating knowledge-based- system (KBS) technology with conventional problem-solving techniques to increase the robustness and usability of their systems. Part of the AAAI Applied Workshop Series, the meeting was intended to bring together researchers and practitioners active in applying AI concepts to agricultural problems.

Commentators on AI converge on two goals they believe define the field: (1) to better understand the mind by specifying computational models and (2) to construct computer systems that perform actions traditionally regarded as mental. We should recognize that AI has a third, hidden, more basic aim; that the first two goals are special cases of the third; and that the actual technical substance of AI concerns only this more basic aim. This third aim is to establish new computation-based representational media, media in which human intellect can come to express itself with different clarity and force. This article articulates this proposal by showing how the intellectual activity we label AI can be likened in revealing ways to each of five familiar technologies.

A panel session at the 1989 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Los Angeles dealt with the subject of knowledge-based systems; the session was entitled "Expert Systems: How Far Can They Go?" The panelists included Randall Davis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Stuart Dreyfus (University of California at Berkeley); Brian Smith (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center); and Terry Winograd (Stanford University), chairman. Part 1 of this article, which appeared in the Spring 1989 issue, began with Winograd's original charge to the panel, followed by lightly edited transcripts of presentations from Winograd and Dreyfus. Part 2 begins with the presentations from Smith and Davis and concludes with the panel discussion.