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From: sts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Expectations of expert system technology
Message-ID: <345@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Jul-83 18:11:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.345
Posted: Mon Jul 25 18:11:37 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Jul-83 10:47:31 EDT
References: <1824@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 29

Expert systems technology is an experimental field whose basic concepts
have been fairly well established in the past few years.  Since it is
really an engineering field (knowledge engineering) much of the
important research is carried on by attempting to develop a specific
application and seeing what sorts of problems and solutions crop up.
This is true for MYCIN, R1, PROSPECTOR, and many other expert systems.
Our Expert Systems Technology group at Boeing has been developing a
prototype flight route planner.  It has provided a good test bed for
more theoretical work on the kinds of tools and capabilities needed
for knowledge engineering (although as a planner, it may never
be fully functional).  Our application is sufficiently difficult
that it is quite experimental, however a simple expert system is not
particularly difficult to put together, if some of the existing
and available tools are used.  Needless to say, many sweeping
generalizations and unjustified assumptions (read: gross hacks) must 
be made, in order to simplify the problem to a point where an expert 
system can be built.  The resulting expert system, although perhaps not
much more capable than a good C program, will be much smaller and
more transparent in structure than any ordinary program.

The ad in question may or may not be reasonable.  I don't know enough
about finance to say whether the knowledge in that domain can be
easily encoded.  However, if the company's expectations are not
too high, they may end up with a reasonable tool, one that will be just
as good as if some C wizard had spent a year of sleepless nights
reinventing the AI wheels.

Stan ("the Leprechaun Hacker") Shebs			 Boeing Aerospace Co.
ssc-vax!sts (soon utah-cs)