AI Becomes An Industry 1980

The first successful commercial expert system, R I, began operation at the Digital Equipment Corporation (McDermott, 1982). The program helped configure orders for new computer systems; by 1986, it was saving the company an estimated $40 million a year.

 By 1988, DEC 7 s AI group had 40 expert systems deployed, with more on the way. Du Pont had 100 in use and 500 in development, saving an estimated $10 million a year. Nearly every major U.S. corporation had its own AI group and was either using or investigating expert systems.

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AI Knowledge Based Systems

Knowledge - based systems: The key to power?  (1969 - 1979)

The picture of problem solving that had arisen during the first decade of A1 research was of

a general - purpose search mechanism trying to string together elementary reasoning steps to find complete solutions. Such approaches have been called weak methods, because, although general, they do not scale up to large or difficult problem instances.

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Artificial Intelligence in 1966-1973

A Dose of Reality (1966-1973)

From the beginning, A1 researchers were not shy about making predictions of their coming

successes. The following statement by Herbert Simon in 1957 is often quoted:

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History of Artificial Intelligence

The gestation of artificial intelligence

The first work that is now generally recognised as A1 was done by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts (1943). They drew on three sources: knowledge of the basic physiology and function of neurons in the brain; a formal analysis of propositional logic due to Russell and Whitehead; and Turing's theory of computation. They proposed a model of artificial neurons in which each neuron is characterized as being  " on "  or  " off, "  with a switch to  " on "  occurring in response to stimulation by a sufficient number of neighboring neurons.

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Control theory, Cybernetics & Linguistics

 How can artifacts operate under their own control?

Ktesibios of Alexandria built the first self - controlling machine: a water clock with a regulator that kept the flow of water running through it at a constant, predictable pace. This invention changed the definition of what an artifact could do. Previously, only living things could modify their behavior in response to changes in the environment. Other examples of self - regulating feedback control systems include the steam engine governor, created by James Watt (1736 - 1 8 19),

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