Reviews

An engineering professor at the University of Quebec and an entrepreneur in the field of artificial intelligence, Crevier predicts that by 2020 or so, computers will have acquired the critical facility that has evaded all thinking machines to date: the ability to reason on a commonsensical level. Setting aside the commanding implications of that speculation, Crevier focusses on AI social history in this chronicle of the more than 30-year engineering saga of the AI movement, citing observations of such guiding lights in the field as Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell. In documenting the jolts and starts of this relatively new area of inquiry (with its overload of acronyms), Crevier diminishes the dislocating effect of confronting an evolution in intelligence greater than our own. Like a sermon preached to believers, this update on the AI movement will appeal mostly to its followers. Library of Science and Small Computer Book Club alternates. (Apr.)

``Tumultuous'' may not be the right adjective to describe the history of artificial intelligence. Certainly, it has promised great things that often failed to materialize, so that the general effect has been more disappointment than tumult. Even the few success stories, like Mycin and Xcon, have their problems. Xcon, the expert configurator used by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), eventually began to crumble from its own weight. The cost to keep knowledge bases current proved to be far higher than anticipated. One joke at DEC is that Xcon replaced 75 systems people, but the expert system requires 150 to maintain it. Crevier traces the history, knows the people, and understands the technology. He concludes with a question: Are we creating the next species of intelligent life on Earth? He sees the answer as a major concern of the 21st century. For computer and technology collections.-- Hilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, Cal.