Artificial Intelligence Prepares for 2001

Artificial Intelligence, as a maturing scientific/engineering discipline, is beginning to find its niche among the variety of subjects that are relevant to intelligent, perceptive behavior. A view of AI is presented that is based on a declarative representation of knowledge with semantic attachments to problem-specific procedures and data structures. It is clear-to most of us in AI, at least-that our field, perhaps together with molecular genetics, will be society's predominant scientific endeavor for the rest of this century and well into the next-just as physics and chemistry predominated during the decades before and after 1900. This article is based on the author's Presidential Address given at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence on August 11, 1983 in Washington, D.C We in AI are now moving on to the higher level processes. AI has made an excellent beginning toward understanding these processes.