It is interesting to note that there is no agreed upon definition of artificial intelligence. However, artificial intelligence has been around for 30 years, so one might wonder why our wheels are still spinning. Below, an attempt is made to answer this question and show why, in a serious sense, artificial intelligence can never demonstrate an outright success within its own discipline. In addition, we will see why the old bromide that "as soon as we understand how to solve a problem, it's no longer artificial intelligence" is necessarily true.

At the start of a project looking into the development of an expert system, the knowledge engineering project team must investigate one or several possible expert system domains. To evaluate the potential of possible application domains, it has proved very useful to have a set of desired attributes for good expert domain. The attribute set was developed as part of a major expert system development project at GTE Laboratories. It was used recurrently (and modified and expanded continually) throughout an extensive application domain evaluation and selection process.

Two topics are treated here. Second, we present an inference machine. This machine treats uncertain knowledge in the form of evidence for and against the accuracy of a proposition. The connection between these two topics is established by implementation of the user model on the inference machine.

The TRW Defense Systems Group develops large man-machine networks that solve problems for government agencies. Because we have been producing first-of- a kind systems like these since the early 1950s, we consider ourselves leaders in the social art of assembling effective teams of diverse experts, and in the engineering art of conceiving and developing networks of interacting machines. Then we found that our well-worked system development techniques did not completely apply, and that our system engineering handbook needed a new chapter on communication between people and machines. We're still writing that chapter, and it won't be finished until we can add some not-yet fully developed artificial intelligence techniques.

This article presents a summary of ongoing, funded artificial intelligence research at North Carolina State University. The primary focus of the research is engineering aspects of artificial intelligence. These research efforts can be categorized into four main areas: engineering expert systems, generative database management systems, human-machine communication, and robotics and vision. The research programs are currently being sponsored by the Center for Communications and Signal Processing (CCSP), the Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering Institute (IMSEI), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The AI Group at The Ohio State University conducts a broad range of research projects in knowledge-based reasoning. The primary focus of this work is on analyzing problem solving, especially within knowledge -rich domains. B. Chandrasekaran has been the director of the group since its inception in the late 1970s.

Although cognitive AI is not generally viewed as being "scientific" in the same, strong sense as is physics, it shares a number of the properties of the natural sciences, especially biology. Certain of special themes of biology, notably the principles of historicity and of structure-function relations, are applicable in AI research. From a biologist's viewpoint, certain principles of cognitive AI research emerge.

On October 17-19, 1984, a workshop on nonmonotonic hospitality suite-generally until late in the evenings reasoning was held at, Mohonk Mountain House, outside The workshop's only disappointment was the shortness New Paltz, New York. Speakers (and the audience) oft,en found Raymond R.eit,er and Bonnie Webbcr, and was sponsored that much more time could have been well-spent, especially by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. The hotel is an inmense of much of the work presented. Surrounded by 2000 Preprints of the papers were distributed at the workshop, acres of private preserve, in full autumnal splcndour, participants but no proceedings will be published A limit,ed number quickly forgot the outside world. The grounds of copies of the preprints can be obtained from.

The Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Workshop has become a tradition. Meeting every year for the past nine years, it has been the forum where all the issues from basic research through applications to implementations have been discussed; it has also become a community building activity, bringing together researchers, medical practitioners, and government and industry sponsors of AIM activities. The AIM Workshop held at Fawcett Center for Tomorrow at Ohio State University, June 30 - July 3, 1984, was no exception. It brought together more than 100 active participants in AIM.

It is interesting to note that there is no agreed upon definition of artificial intelligence. Why is this interesting? Because government agencies ask for it, software shops claim to provide it, popular magazines and newspapers publish articles about it, dreamers base their fantasies on it, and pragmatists criticize and denounce it. Such a state of affairs has persisted since Newell, Simon and Shaw wrote their first chess program and proclaimed that in a few years, a computer would be the world champion. Not knowing exactly what we are talking about or expecting is typical of a new field; for example, witness the chaos that centered around program verification of security related aspects of systems a few years ago. The details are too grim to recount in mixed company. However, artificial intelligence has been around for 30 years, so one might wonder why our wheels are still spinning. Below, an attempt is made to answer this question and show why, in a serious sense, artificial intelligence can never demonstrate an outright success within its own discipline. In addition, we will see why the old bromide that "as soon as we understand how to solve a problem, it's no longer artificial intelligence" is necessarily true.