Artificial Intelligence in the Personal Computer Environment, Today and Tomorrow

Al AND THE PERSONAL COMPUTER, TODAY It has been almost th i r t y years since the Dartmouth Conference on a r t i f i c i a l intel l igence. Since then, AI has emerged from a laboratory curiosity to a blossoming technology with world wide strategic implications. As this technology prol i ferates, the PC w i l l become a major delivery vehicle for expert systems. The PC is already being used to deploy small expert systems and I t ' s power is bound to increase over the coming years. This panel w i l l examine the history of the PC in AI, the current state of development and attempt to en vision future developments in the marriage of these technologies. PERSONAL COMPUTER POWER 1981 was a watershed year for computers according to market research from INPUT Inc.. It was the f i r s t year that instal led end user computing power (PC's and individual workstations) equaled that of mainframe computers. It is estimated that in 1986 PC computing power alone w i l l equal that of a l l other computers. This pattern w i l l continue as PC's become increasingly more powerful and the boundary between PC's and workstations becomes forever blurred. VISIONS OF THE PERSONAL COMPUTER One of the f i r s t people to champion the concept of the personal computer was Dr. Alan Kay. Dr. Kay's work on the Alto and the Dynabook along with others at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970's was the basis of many of the developments we see today. These developments include: bit-mapped graphics, f l a t screens, personal workstations and networking. Dr. Kay's Dynabook actually predicted the portable, f l a t personal computer. The Dynabook currently has many commercial realizations including machines by Apple, HP, Data General, Osborne, Morrow, Radio Shack, Grid, Convergent Technology and NEC. These machines, while not achieving the f u l l performance envisioned by Dr. Kay, w i l l surely be improved and f u l f i l l his design goals. Today many run time expert systems are being delivered on PC's and dedicated workstation's. One of the most ambitious is the GE Cats-1 expert system for assisting in diesel locomotive repair. This expert system is deployed on a dedicated workstation and contains over 1200 production rules. Cats-1 is an expert tutor. When used in conjunction with a video disk player it can show diagrams and training f i lm sequences in conjunction with the consultation process. PUFF an expert system, written in EMYCIN Is used to diagnose obstructive airway diseases. PUFF which or ig inal ly consisted of 55 production rules, ha6 been rewritten in Basic and is now being commercially provided on a system which incorporates diagnostic hardware and uses an Apple II as a delivery vehicle. Applied Expert Systems has already deployed an expert system on the IBM PC-XT, for use in the f inancial services Industry. The use of PC delivery vehicles is easily predicted because of i t ' s large Installed base and declining price. Workstations w i l l continue to be popular because their power reduces expert system development time. Development of expert systems on dedicated workstations has proceeded from the introduction of the LM 2 by Lisp Machines Inc. and continues unabated on workstations from a wide range of vendors. The evolution of expert systems on PC's is now gaining momentum. There are now at least a dozen Implementations of Lisp and PROLOG for the IBM PC. ExperTelllgence has recently introduced a Lisp and a Smalltalk for the Macintosh with an 0PS5 soon to be released. There are already two versions of 0PS5 available for the IBM PC as well as a version of Smalltalk. The wide ava i lab i l i ty of the classic AI languages on the PC w i l l lead to numerous expert systems being developed and deployed on the PC.