Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Grand Challenges:  Expert System Shells replace COBOL
Message-ID: <1680@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 30 Sep 88 07:53:30 GMT
References: <123@feedme.UUCP> <17736@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <1717@randvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 41

In article <1717@randvax.UUCP> leverich@rand-unix.UUCP (Brian Leverich) writes:
>A bet is that over the next decade what shells _really_ do is allow the
>business data processing community to automate a whole class of clerical
>activities they haven't been able to handle in the past.  Unglamorous as
>it seems, that single class of applications will really (no hype) save
>industry billions of dollars.

At last, someone in comp.ai lets it slip what ES shells are really
being used for (not a revelation to anyone who follows IKBS usage though).

Surveys in the UK (d'Agapeyeff, Ince) show that shells are being used
to write small (200 rule) systems that do traditional DP processing
which probably is beyond realistic COBOL programming.  Furthermore
(Ince) they are being programmed by casual computer users with no
programming background.

Someone asked for the 3 achievements of AI and no one answered.  I
intended to post my 3 to the net, but got diverted by some metaphysics.

I vote ES shells the achievement of the decade for:

	   avoiding CS snobbery and turning out restricted natural
	   language end-user programming languages which the untrained
	   user will pick up and write applications in.  Shells may be
	   the first step in bringing some form of programming to the
	   masses (but remember that adventure games got there first
	   with restricted natural language).

Note that the big shells (Art, KEE etc) fail the test as they replace
CS snobbery with IKBS snobbery.  The shells in real use tend to be the
PC based ones.

Note that the human-computer system here is quite powerful, far more
powerful than the no-human system aimed at by the AI zealots.  If
more people in AI understood the classic human factors task allocation
problem, they would be more likely to turn out technologies which do
help people to use computers, rather than abortive technologies
which try to help computers to abuse people.  Thank god this fails.
-- 
Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science,  The University, Glasgow
	gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert