leff@smu.UUCP (Laurence Leff) (04/13/88)
Summary of Spang Robinson Report on Artificial Intelligence Volume 4, No. 2, February 1988 Lead article is on "Who's Buying AI in 1988" AI Users in National Institutes for Health and National Library of Medicine have "not had their AI efforsts substantially affected by the cuts so far. In fact, NLM is actively recruiting AI programmers." The Aerospace Daily (12/21/87) said "Artificial Intelligence may turn out to be the most pivotal technology of this century." "Equitable Life has disbanded its entire R&D group, including AI. The trader's workstation, the hot topic of yesteryear, appears to be a taboo subject these days. And a large number of resuems are circulating from financial services AI programmers." The number of insurance companies in AI grows almost daily. Price Waterhouse, for example, has opened an AI research center in Menlo Park, CA. Arthur ADL intends to double its AI staff by the end of 1988. Coopers and Lybrand will shortly open two more AI field offices." &^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^ Applications Westinghouse Electric Corporation has developed an on-line system for monitoring plant chemistry in nuclear power plants. General Electric implemented PHASEID to identify phases in the nickel-based superalloy, Inconel 718 in Exsys. It uses Rockwell Hardness, optical metallography and energy dispersive spectroscopy. (D. J. Parker, J. M. Arde, Jr. and S. T. Wlodek) Canadian Pacific developed an expert system to analyze oil samples form a diesel locomotive. It interprets the data from a spectrometer. The system contains 490 rules and has analyzed 10,000 samples and is now deployed at five sites. The system is being marketed to other railroads. A mechanic decided to disregard the recommendations of the system causing a $250,000 failure. Texas Instrumetns developed a technicians assistant to handle epi reactors, used in semiconductor manufacturing. The system has saved at least $80,000 per year. by improving mean-time-to-repair by 34 per cent and mean-time-between-failures by 44 per cent. It handles 95 percent of the problems. It uses a database of failures. The success of the project lead to new projects for proble station repair, sputtering stations, dry etchers and a compression nitride depositon system. 50,000 plus PC-based expert systems shells of various types have been sold. (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Review of DEC's expert system seminar. This seminar approaches "cultural planning" It has case study approach and discusses eight different models of organizational changes. A consulting failure was described where AI was brought in to fix a failing business unit using expert system technology. DEC believes that since expert systems distribute knowledge, they tend to decentralize the orgaization and distribute power. The course costs $2,000 and in the opinion of the review, "well worth the price of admission." U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_ Discusson on Teknowledge. It has layed off 30% of its employees and will become an AI services company. It lost eight million due to costs from "tool products." They will not do the data base integration and application packages of Copernicus and will not sell it through its direct sales force. It will continue to maintain M.1 and S.1. #@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@ Shorts: Inference is founding a consortium including current customers to develop expert systems for IBM mainframes. They will be porting ART to Hewlett-Packard 9000 workstations. Prophecy will market Contessa, ak nowledge-based applicatoin generator for financial services, on the Sun-3's and Sun-4's. IFPS/plus is a version of the famous financial modelling system IFPS which has artifical intelligence language capability. It will be available on Apollo computers. Dec's internal ROI on Ai applications is 200 to 300 percent. Intellicorp announced a $972,000 loss for quarter ending December 31, 1987. Revenues were five million.. Russell Notsker and Brian Sear (CEO and COO, respectively) have resigned from Symbolics. For the second quarter, the company lost fifteen million dollars on 23 million in revenue which included a restructuring charge of 12 million. Carnegie Group has added tools to Knowledge Craft to have displays of dial meters and thermometers and maintenance of a calendar of events. UNISYS is setting up an AI systems family so it can be a one -source vendor for AI applicatoins. The Commerce Department reports that there 2000 to 3000 LISP programmers in the United States. They make between $50,000 and $100,00 and continuue to be in short supply.