K nowledge Expansion

In the seven years after the conference, AI began to pick up momentum. Although the field was still undefined, ideas formed at the conference were re-examined, and built upon. Centers for AI research began forming at Carnegie Mellon and MIT, and a new challenges were faced: further research was placed upon creating systems that could efficiently solve problems, by limiting the search, such as the Logic Theorist. And second, making systems that could learn by themselves.

In 1957, the first version of a new program The General Problem Solver(GPS) was tested. The program developed by the same pair which developed the Logic Theorist. The GPS was an extension of Wiener's feedback principle, and was capable of solving a greater extent of common sense problems. A couple of years after the GPS, IBM contracted a team to research artificial intelligence. Herbert Gelerneter spent 3 years working on a program for solving geometry theorems.

While more programs were being produced, McCarthy was busy developing a major breakthrough in AI history. In 1958 McCarthy announced his new development; the LISP language, which is still used today. LISP stands for LISt Processing, and was soon adopted as the language of choice among most AI developers.

In 1963 MIT received a 2.2 million dollar grant from the United States government to be used in researching Machine-Aided Cognition (artificial intelligence). The grant by the Department of Defense's Advanced research projects Agency (ARPA), to ensure that the US would stay ahead of the Soviet Union in technological advancements. The project served to increase the pace of development in AI research, by drawing computer scientists from around the world, and continues funding.

The Multitude of programs

The next few years showed a multitude of programs, one notably was SHRDLU. SHRDLU was part of the microworlds project, which consisted of research and programming in small worlds (such as with a limited number of geometric shapes). The MIT researchers headed by Marvin Minsky, demonstrated that when confined to a small subject matter, computer programs could solve spatial problems and logic problems. Other programs which appeared during the late 1960's were STUDENT, which could solve algebra story problems, and SIR which could understand simple English sentences. The result of these programs was a refinement in language comprehension and logic.

Another advancement in the 1970's was the advent of the expert system. Expert systems predict the probability of a solution under set conditions. For example:

Because of the large storage capacity of computers at the time, expert systems had the potential to interpret statistics, to formulate rules. And the applications in the market place were extensive, and over the course of ten years, expert systems had been introduced to forecast the stock market, aiding doctors with the ability to diagnose disease, and instruct miners to promising mineral locations. This was made possible because of the systems ability to store conditional rules, and a storage of information.

During the 1970's Many new methods in the development of AI were tested, notably Minsky's frames theory. Also David Marr proposed new theories about machine vision, for example, how it would be possible to distinguish an image based on the shading of an image, basic information on shapes, color, edges, and texture. With analysis of this information, frames of what an image might be could then be referenced. another development during this time was the PROLOGUE language. The language was proposed for In 1972.

During the 1980's AI was moving at a faster pace, and further into the corporate sector. In 1986, US sales of AI-related hardware and software surged to $425 million. Expert systems in particular demand because of their efficiency. Companies such as Digital Electronics were using XCON, an expert system designed to program the large VAX computers. DuPont, General Motors, and Boeing relied heavily on expert systems Indeed to keep up with the demand for the computer experts, companies such as Teknowledge and Intellicorp specializing in creating software to aid in producing expert systems formed. Other expert systems were designed to find and correct flaws in existing expert systems.