Letters to the Editor

AI Magazine

Subjects include AI's impact on employment, the AAAI conference, a response to McCarthy's Presidential Message, AI going public, and computerless expert systems.


Comparing Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Engineering: Commercialization Lessons

AI Magazine

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly leaving its academic home and moving into the marketplace. There are few precedents for an arcane academic subject becoming commercialized so rapidly. But, genetic engineering, which recently burst forth from academia to become the foundation for the hot new biotechnology industry, provides useful insights into the rites of passage awaiting the commercialization of artificial intelligence. This article examines the structural similarities and dissimilarities in the two subjects and briefly summarizes the history of the commercialization of genetic engineering. It then proposes some lessons that would benefit the artificial intelligence industry.



Artificial Intelligence in Canada: A Review

AI Magazine

Canadians have made many contributions to artificial intelligence over the years. This article presents a summary of current research in artificial intelligence in Canada and acquaints readers with the Canadian organization for artificial intelligence -- the Canadian Society for the Computational Studies of Intelligence / Societe Canadienne pour l' Etude de l'Intelligence par Ordinateur (CSCSI/ SCEIO).


Physical Object Representation and Generalization: A Survey of Programs for Semantic-Based Natural Language Processing

AI Magazine

This article surveys a portion of the field of natural language processing. The main areas considered are those dealing with representation schemes, particularly work on physical object representation, and generalization processes driven by natural language understanding. The emphasis of this article is on conceptual representation of objects based on the semantic interpretation of natural language input. Six programs serve as case studies for guiding the course of the article. Within the framework of describing each of these programs, several other programs, ideas, and theories that are relevant to the program in focus are presented.


Artificial Intelligence at Schlumbergers

AI Magazine

Schlumberger is a large, multinational corporation concerned primarily with the measurement, collection, and interpretation of data. For the past fifty years, most of the activities have been related to hydrocarbon exploration. The efficient location and production of hydrocarbons from an underground formation requires a great deal of knowledge about the formation, ranging in scale from the size and shape of the rock's pore spaces to the size and shape of the entire reservoir. Schlumberger provides its clients with two types of information : measurements, called logs, of the petrophysical properties of the rock around the borehole, such as its electrical, acoustical, and radioactive characteristics; and in terpretations of these logs in terms of geophysical properties such as porosity and mineral composition. Since log interpretation is expert skill, the emergence of expert systems technology prompted Schlumberger's initial interest in Artificial Intelligence. Our first full- scale attempt at a commercial-quality expert system was the Dipmeter Advisor. Following these initial efforts, Schlumberger has expanded its Artificial Intelligence activities, and is now engaged in both basic and applied research in a wide variety of areas.



Artificial Intelligence Research at NASA Langley Research Center (Research in Progress)

AI Magazine

Research in the field of artificial intelligence is developing rapidly at the various NASA centers, including Langley research Center in Hampton, Virginia. AI studies at Langley involve research for application in aircraft flight management, remote space teleoperators and robots, and structural optimization.


Introduction to the COMTEX Microfiche Edition of Reports on Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie-Mellon University

AI Magazine

Originally it was Complex Information Processing. Complex Information processing lives on now only in the title of the CIP Working Papers, a series started by Herb Simon in 1956 and still accumulating entries (to 447). However, from about 1965 much of the work on artificial intelligence that was not related to psychology began to appear in technical reports of the Computer Science Department. Starting in the early 1970s (on one can recall exactly when), they did become the subject of a general mailing and thus began to form what everyone thinks of as the CMU Computer Science Technical Reports.


Artificial Intelligence in Transition

AI Magazine

In the past fifteen years artificial intelligence has changed from being the preoccupation of a handful of scientists to a thriving enterprise that has captured the imagination of world leaders and ordinary citizens alike. While corporate and government officials organize new projects whose potential impact is widespread, to date few people have been more affected by the transition than those already in the field. I review here some aspects of this transition, and pose some issues that it raises for AI researchers, developers, and leaders.