Laws@KL.SRI.COM (Ken Laws) (10/15/87)
Part of what we are seeing in AI is the evolution from horizontal to vertical marketing. Vertical integration (i.e., applications) had to wait for the horizontal suppliers to develop their machines and software -- with the exception of a few early systems such as Dendral and R1/XCON. The horizontal market has saturated, though, partly because it is much easier to develop a general-purpose system than it is to really understand a customer's applications and needs (in addition to developing an AI system capable of handling previously unsolved problems). Unless some new market opens up -- business, military, educational, or consumer -- the horizontal companies have now sold to everyone interested in buying. The companies that will survive are the ones cultivating vertical markets such as warehousing or the printing industry. In some cases these companies are now offering higher priced software with reduced functionality, but with vocabulary and customer support aimed at a specific industry. In other cases the applied systems have not yet become visible simply because it takes a long time to turn a general tool into a useful tool. Expert systems are not dead; the successful ones are just going through another development cycle. The resulting proprietary systems will be hyped in the trade journals rather than the research journals, and will be part of the commercial woodwork from now on. -- Ken -------