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From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Expectations of expert system technology
Message-ID: <1824@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-Jul-83 01:41:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1824
Posted: Sun Jul 24 01:41:35 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Jul-83 02:53:19 EDT
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 32

From a recent headhunting flyer sent to some AAAI members:

"We have been retained by a major Financial Institution, located in New York
City.  They are interested in building the support staff for their money market
traders and are looking for qualified candidates for the following positions:

  A Senior AI Researcher who has experience in knowledge rep'n and expert
  systems.  The ideal candidate would have a graduate degree in CS - AI with
  a Psychology (particularly cognitive processes), Cultural Anthropology, or
  comparable background.  This person will start by being a consultant in
  Human Factors and would interact between the Traders and the Systems they
  use.  Two new Xerox 1100 computers have been purchased and experience in LISP
  programming is necessary (with INTERLISP-D preferred).  This person will have
  their own personal LISP machine.  The goal of this position will be to
  analyze how Traders think and to build trading support (expert) systems
  geared to the individual Trader's style."

Two other job descriptions are given for the same project, for an economist and
an MBA with CS (database, communications, and systems) and Operations Research
background.

The fact that the co. would buy the 1100's without consulting their future user
and the tone of the description prompts me to wonder if the co. is treating
expert system technology as an engineering discipline which can produce results
in a relatively short order rather than the experimental field it appears to
be.  Particularly troubling is the problem domain for this system-- I would
expect such traders to make extensive use of knowledge about politics and
economic policy on a number of levels, not easy knowledge to represent.

I'm not an expert systems builder by any means and may be underestimating
the technology...  does anyone think this co. is not expecting too much?
(Replies to the net, please)