Bits of history and ongoing future

Artificial intelligence and cognitive science must look at the world of industrial process control to find the technological reifications of the concept of mind. 1 Motivation Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be at an impasse. The old vision of AI that started as the search for the computer-based technology of the artificial mind is not delivering. The excessive initial hype opened the door to ample criticisms after the failure to fulfill some bold predictions. In a sense, cognitive systems research has recently replaced AI as the forefront of this research programme. A new name for the same set of objectives just to elude the tagging as failure. But the problem of the AI research programme may not be in the methods but in the naı̈ve conceptualizations that have driven and are still driving this research. Indeed, AI has not been a failure. Many AI technologies have been demonstrated and are routinely used with enormous success in many domains. From credit card authentication to nozzle design and language understanding. But, beyond the many focused applications of concrete AI technologies, the big objective of artificial intelligence is also an ongoing success. However, the realization of an artificial intelligence is not to be found in the domain of robotics —still in its infancy— but in the uncontroversially materialistic and practical world of industrial process plants. The challenges posed today by these complex technical systems