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From: SHEBS@UTAH-20.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Windows and Expert Systems
Message-ID: <12454@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Sep-84 12:09:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12454
Posted: Thu Sep 27 12:09:16 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Sep-84 04:48:50 EDT
Lines: 26

From:  Stan Shebs 

Has anyone else become bothered by the recent apparent equation between
window packages and expert system tools?  The recent spiel on Teknowledge's
M.1 takes care to mention that it provides windows (along with other features).
However, other vendors (for instance all of those at the recent AAAI) seem
to emphasize their window and menu capabilities at the expense of actual
reasoning capacity.  Recent papers on expert systems at both AAAIs and IJCAIs
include the obligatory picture of a screen with all the capabilities being
shown at once (even if they're not really related to the paper's content).
What's going on?
Does a window system really have something substantial to offer expert systems
development?  If so, what is it?  Ultra-high bandwidth for display, so that
the system doesn't have to decide what the user wants to see - it just shows
everything?  Do people get entranced by all the pretty pictures?  Ease of
managing multiple processes (what expert system tools can even employ multiple
communicating processes)?  We've got zillions of machines with window systems
around here, but they seem supremely irrelevant to the process of expert
system development (perhaps because I tend to regard a system that requires
only low-bandwidth communication to be more inherently intelligent - it has
to do more inference to supply missing information).  Can anyone give a solid
justification for windows being an essential part of an expert systems tool?
(Please no one say anything about it being easier to sell tools with flashy
graphics...)

                                                        stan shebs