Cooperative access systems

In the next five years we can expect to find a variety of cooperative natural language (NL) interfaces to database systems, expert systems, operating systems, CAD systems and even text formatting systems. Although the general problem of getting computers to understand NL is far from being solved, the technology for limited NL access systems is available now and there is a large growing market for such cooperative interfaces to a wide variety of software. In the first part of the paper, we illustrate the capabilities for cooperative response generation implemented in AI systems. Then we briefly review the state of the art in NL interfaces to databases and expert systems. Topics covered include user modeling, the generation of explanations, mixed initiative dialogs and knowledge acquisition via NL communication.