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-- By the end of next year, Ford dealers across the country may no longer have to call Dearborn, Mich., to talk with Company Expert Gordy Kujawski every time they run into a hard-to-diagnose engine problem. Instead, they will simply plug into a new nationwide computer system developed by Ford to duplicate the reasoning Kujawski uses to untangle the knottiest problems.
Two years ago IBM's Schorr proclaimed the "second wave" of the information revolution. "While the first wave automated data processing," he said, "the second wave will automate decision making." IBM now considers itself the world leader in second-wave technology and is either using or developing expert systems throughout the company. Big Blue's claims to leadership, however, get spirited argument from companies like Digital Equipment Corp. and E.I. du Pont de Nemours. They and others are using second-wave technology not only to bring computers to bear on problems that until now have been bypassed by the information revolution but also to extend the range and availability of human expertise. Says Edward Feigenbaum, an AI pioneer and co-author of a | forthcoming book on second-wave success stories: "Every system we have looked at improved productivity by more than an order of magnitude -- that's like the difference between a car and a jet plane."
Despite these gains, current systems operate within strict limits and too often behave more like idiots savants than experts. Second-wave systems as yet have no common sense or awareness of the world outside their narrow slice of expertise. At high-tech redoubts like Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in California, scientists are planning decision-making systems that will behave more like real experts. Example: an all-purpose electronic repairman that uses knowledge and common sense about electricity to diagnose any problem put before it. At Xerox and elsewhere, other scientists are examining the very foundations of artificial intelligence. Their aim: a theory that will enable them to build computers that can step outside the limits of a specific expertise and understand the nature and context of the problems they are confronting.
Still, the impetus behind second-wave technology is not its potential but what it can deliver now in financial returns and improved productivity. In April 1986, IBM brought on line its first expert system, called DEFT (for Diagnostic Expert-Final Test). Its task: to perform the mundane but critical job of diagnosing problems during the final testing of the giant disk drives that store information for IBM's mainframe computers. Since then the testing system has been adapted as a diagnostic tool for IBM service experts and to perform a variety of different tests on IBM equipment. IBM's initial cost: roughly $100,000. The payoff: $12 million in annual savings.
At Xerox, a leading U.S. manufacturer of copying machines, expert systems like RIC (for Remote Interactive Communications) are giving the first practical hints about what the second-wave revolution will mean. Employing the reasoning of a special Xerox team of diagnosticians, RIC reads data from a copier's internal instruments, senses when something is about to go wrong, and sends a report to a repairman, who can warn the customer that an imminent breakdown can be avoided by taking appropriate steps. Theoretically, Xerox copiers hooked up to RIC systems should never break down.