This article presents a brief history of artificial intelligence research at the Rand Corporation. Rand has long been a leader in the field of AI, beginning with the seminal work of Newell, Shaw, and Simon some thirty years ago, and continues with recent work in expert systems and knowledge-based simulation. This article traces the major accomplishments in AI at Rand with particular emphasis on Rand's research during the past decade. The references highlight the major Rand documents on AI and related subjects.

The consensus of government, academic, and industry leaders widely supports the strategic positioning of U.S. and Japanese research and development in mutually beneficial, two-way flows of innovation. This report is derived from the IJCAI panel titled U.S and Japanese Cooperation in AI and R&D Opportunities, held August 23, 1986 at the University of California at Los Angeles. This panel discussed the sensitive topic of alternatives to nationalistic competitive strategies that have contributed to an extreme trade deficit surpassing $40 billion in 1986. The ideas offered by the panelists shed light on ways our countries' respective scientific communities can blend talents to achieve the best results in reducing trade frictions. Each country has designated AI research as a key to unlock years of generations of technology and has directed billions of dollars to fund this development. The most recognized projects are the U.S. Microelectronics Technology Computer Consortium (MCC) and Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Project (ICOT). Although noting the obstacles, the panelists encouraged specific, shared efforts to ensure the development of a closer working relationship to explore AI's benefits.

The possibility of constructing a personal AI raises many ethical and religious questions that have been dealt with seriously only by imaginative works of fiction; they have largely been ignored by technical experts and by philosophical and theological ethicists. Arguing that a personal AI is possible in principle, and that its accomplishments could be adjudicated by the Turing Test, the article suggests some of the moral issues involved in AI experimentation by comparing them to issues in medical experimentation. Finally, the article asks questions about the capacities and possibilities of such an artifact for making moral decisions. It is suggested that much a priori ethical thinking is necessary and that, that such a project cannot only stimulate our moral imaginations, but can also tell us much about our moral thinking and pedagogy, whether or not it is ever accomplished in fact.

During the past two years, the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence has attracted considerable attention within the AI community as a promising method of dealing with uncertainty in expert systems. As presented in the literature, the theory is hard to master. In a simple approach that is outlined in this paper, the Dempster-Shafer theory is viewed in the context of relational databases as the application of familiar retrieval techniques to second-order relations in first normal form. The relational viewpoint clarifies some of the controversial issues in the Dempster-Shafer theory and facilities its use in AI-oriented applications.

THE AI MAGAZINE Summer, 1986 55 building one of the first stored-program digital computers, AI also had its share of controversy, however, at Rand the JOHNNIAC (see Figure 1) (Gruenberger, 1968);l and elsewhere. Given its quick rise to popularity and its George Dantzig and his associates were inventing linear ambitious predictions (Simon & Newell, 1958), AI soon programming (Dantzig, 1963); Les Ford and Ray Fulkerson had its critics, and one of the most prominent, Hubert were developing techniques for network flow analysis Dreyfus, published his famous critique of AI (Dreyfus, (Ford & Fulkerson, 1962); Richard Bellman was developing 1965) while he was consulting at Rand. In addition, the his ideas on dynamic programming (Bellman, 1953); early promise of automatic machine translation of text Herman Kahn was advancing techniques for Monte Carlo from one language to another (the emphasis at Rand was simulation (Kahn, 1955); Lloyd Shapley was revolutionizing on translation from Russian to English) produced only game theory (Shapley, 1951-1960); Stephen Kleene was modest systems, and the goal of fully automated machine advancing our understanding of finite automata (Kleene, translation was abandoned in the early 1960s.

The first blackboard system was the HEARSAY-II speech understanding system (Erman et al.,1980) that evolved between 1971 and 1976. Subsequently, many systems have been built that have similar system organization and run-time behavior. The objectives of this article are (1) to define what is meant by "blackboard systems" and (2) to show the richness and diversity of blackboard system designs. The article begins with a discussion of the underlying concept behind all blackboard systems, the blackboard model of problem solving. In order to bridge the gap between a model and working systems, the blackboard framework, an extension of the basic blackboard model is introduced, including a detailed description of the model's components and their behavior. A model does not come into existence on its own, and is usually an abstraction of many examples. In Section 2 the history of ideas is traced, and the designs of some application systems that helped shape the blackboard model are detailed. Part 2 of this article which will appear in the next issue of AI Magazine, describes and contrasts some blackboard systems and discusses the characteristics of application problems suitable for the blackboard method of problem solving.

The interpretation of images of postal mail pieces is The Vision Group the domain of this investigation. Our efforts have included It is becoming increasingly important for vision researchers the development of various operators for visual data processing in diverse fields to interact, and the Vision Group at SUNY and image segmentation. The invocation of these Buffalo was formed to facilitate that interaction Current routines and the interpretation of the information they return membership includes 25 faculty and 25 students from 10 is determined by a control structure that uses a variant departments (computer science, electrical and computer of relaxation combined with a rule-based methodology.

Conference-AAAI-84, paid in 1985 (6.870)

The third approach left the technology codes untouched and built a procedural program that initiated separate, independent processes consisting of the technology codes communicating through a common database. This was better because the technology organizations continued to maintain technical and managerial control over their codes. The rigid procedural integration program was still unacceptably costly to modify, requiring a flow time of approximately six weeks. However, it did provide a prototype and baseline for the knowledge system.

Author-title index to volume six of "AI Magazine