6284801

7/17/2019 6284801

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7

Expert Systems:

A Discussion

Winston

Before we rush home

to

build expert systems of our own we

should consider the difficulties of starting such an effort. I

would like to ask Dr. Baker about his experiences recruiting

people at Schlumberger. My guess is that Schlumberger

had

some misconceptions about how to recruit people in

Artificial Intelligence

and what

it takes

to

set

up

a group.

Now that

it

has had several years of experience I would like

to ask Dr. Baker if he has advice about setting

up

a group

and what he would do differently

if

he were starting all over

again.

Baker

The acquisition of good people is one of our largest problems.

Not building up

our

artificial-intelligence staff beyond what

we considered a critical level has been our largest mistake.

e

tended

to

have

too

few people

and

too many problems.

To recruit good people in Artificial Intelligence has been

one of our most difficult problems simply because there

are

not enough good people to go around.

I

am

not sure how we would do things differently. A

good problem

and

a good computing environment are

the

best tools for recruiting people. For a while we lagged in

our computing environment. Now we think that things are

a little

better.

At least we do not hear nearly as

many

complaints from our employees now

and

sometimes

the

people even have nice things to say about us.

The

two major variables again are

the

good computing

environment

and

the

good problem

to

work on. Success

in some

area

will also

attract

people who are not will

ing

to

make that initial step into your organization.

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Discussion

92

Winston

Dr. Baker, could you quantify that a little bit?

In

particular

could you say something about what you consider

to

be

an

adequate

computing environment in

terms of what

kind

of

machines per person? Could you also say something

about

what you consider

to be

a minimal group

to

reach critical

mass?

aker

First,

let

me

tell you a

bit about

the

history

of our

computing

environment. Five or six people formed

the

original project.

All

of

these people shared a

DEC

2020 at

the

time, which

certainly was

not

adequate. We considered going

to

either a

larger DEC

2

system or a VAX system, but we could

not

get

the

kind of environment we wanted for LISP. We ended

up going the route of personal work stations.

It is difficult to give the numbers of

the

people that

we have in

our

artificial-intelligence group today.

There

are about

forty-five people. in

the department, of

whom

about

twenty-five are researchers. At least

half

have some

inclination toward Artificial Intelligence. Many have PhDs

in

Artificial Intelligence; some have

master's

degrees

in

Artificial Intelligence;

others

are

trained

in

other

back

grounds

and

work

on·

artificial-intelligence problems.

We now use personal work stations. We set a goal

about

eighteen months ago

that

all senior scientists in

the

group would have personal work stations, which would be

networked

into

a larger computer system. We are

about

two-thirds there at

the

present time. A number of our work

stations

are

in a public area. Although all of

the

work

stations

are

constantly in use,

we

are

not

suffering from lack

of

computing power.

In terms

of how

many

people are needed for a critical mass

in

Artificial Intelligence, I think

it

is

in the

neighborhood

of

ten

professionals. These people would

be

augmented by

support from programmers and technicians.

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93

Expert

Systems

Winston

I would like

to

ask Mr.

Kraft

a related question. I know

that

Schlumberger s approach, at least in the beginning, was to

hire people

with

degrees in Artificial Intelligence or those

who were established in

the

field. Perhaps as a consequence,

Schlumberger s acceleration into the field was somewhat

slower than it might have been. Digital s approach seems

to be different. Is

it

the case that you have

taken

a lot

of current employees

and put

them into your Artificial

Intelligence effort

at

Digital?

Kraft

e

have used two approaches.

e

went to the universities

for help

with prototypes.

e

also hired some PhD-level

people from

the

outside.

The

majority of

the

people working

on artificial-intelligence projects

at

Digital were other kinds

of programmers we already employed, whom we retrained.

Not all are capable

of starting

completely new projects

or

using all the techniques, but we realized

we

could not get

the staff we needed to grow as fast as we wanted. Internal

training courses we have developed for these people have

been very successful.

avis

I was interested in the atmosphere of your talk in

the

sense

that it

sounds like

an

enthusiastic endorsement of

the

field. When I present that kind of enthusiasm to industrial

audiences, I get the reaction that this is nigh unto heresy.

Leaving aside your own personal conversion for the moment,

how

has that

attitude been received? Did Digital change its

mind all of a sudden? What happened?

Kraft

t

was a slow progression. As people began

to

see

that

this

might work and they got positive feedback from people in

the factories, they started to feel that XCON was a useful

tool. Then the salespeople got wind

of it

and wanted to

use it but complained that it was just too unfriendly. They

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Discussion

94

demanded something better, so we launched off into XSEL.

Once again Digital was willing to put

up

seed money for a

research-level effort.

Winston

I believe almost all

of the

projects you are working on

at

Digital now

are

intended for internal use.

Can

you

say

anything about

Digital s plans, if any,

to

become a

knowledge-engineering company, as opposed

to

a consumer

of knowledge engineering?

avis

To what extent is Digital s image of itself changing? Has it

begun

to stop

thinking of itself as a hardware vendor? Has

it augmented that image?

Kraft

We have thought

about the

continuum of everything

from delivering artificial-intelligence languages in a VMS

environment all

the

way

out to turnkey custom

systems.

e are trying to

understand

what it takes to deliver those

things.

There

is no commitment to do that yet, but

there

is

a commitment

to understand what

the problem is and what

it

takes

to

solve

the

problem.

Internally we are developing that expertise.

Whether

we

will bring

it to the

marketplace is

an

open question. Are

we getting more into software and applications? While

our revenues come mostly from hardware, we are paying

increasing

attention to

software.

Winston

Perhaps for symmetry we should ask Dr. Baker similar

questions

with

respect to Schlumberger s interest in Artificial

Intelligence. Schlumberger branched

out

from

the

oil

exploration business to a serious commitment

to

electronics.

There must be

some interest

at

Schlumberger in creating

expert

systems for

these

other

areas as well.

Can

you say

something about that?

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95

Expert

Systems

Davis

Let me

read

you a quote: Coal

and

oil have made

the

industrial revolution because they brought

abundant

and

· cheap physical power. Microprocessors

and

memory

will make

another

revolution because

they

bring

abundant

and cheap intellectual power. A simple, almost obvious

statement, and

yet difficult to fully grasp in

its

finality.

The scientists call it the new era of Artificial Intelligence.

Jean

Riboud,

the

president

of

Schlumberger, said it in 1980.

He went

on

to

say, This technical revolution, Artificial

Intelligence, is as

important

for

our

future as

the

surge in

oil exploration.

There

is a

certain

irony there.

The

surge in oil exploration

has fizzled. One would hope the commitment to Artificial

Intelligence has

not

quite. Are you planning

any

bold moves?

Baker

In

the

wireline

or

oil-field services

part

of

Schlumberger,

we are basically a service company.

When

we

talk about

a

commercial system, we mean one that we would use

to

give

answers

to our

clients.

It

would

be

commercial in

the

sense

that all of our software tends to remain with us when w

give the answer

to our

clients.

In the

beginning there was some skepticism

about

Artificial

Intelligence

at

Schlumberger.

Our

demonstrations

of

the

DIPMETER

ADVISOR and of what we could do with

some

of the

artificial-intelligence

computer

systems

tended

to overcome that skepticism. I do not know about plans

for building things that will be sold outside. I think

there

are some activities at Fairchild that

are

basic research in

nature. There are also some things being developed to help

other parts of the

company very much

the

way

the

work at

Digital is going now.

Winston

On one side, Professor Pople, you have a fellow whose

company has saved

substantial

amounts

of

money because

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Discussion

96

of Artificial Intelligence,

and

on

the other

side you have a

fellow from a company that will k e unthinkable amounts

of money from Artificial Intelligence. Yet you have been

rather

reticent

about

when you think medical diagnosis

systems will

be

practical. ·when do you intend to form your

company, and where can I buy stock?

ople

We often have people come through looking for opportunities

to invest in this new technology. t is very hard to steel

oneself and to say, No we

don t

want yout money.

e

are

a long way from the point that we can begin

to

think of

deploying the kind of systems that we have.

e

probably have a fifty man-year investment in

the

project. I do

not

know how many dollars have been invested,

but if we count direct investment and indirect investment,

such as free computer· services, it is probably something

of

the

order of magnitude

that

Mr. Kraft saves yearly. I

est imate we have about seven million dollars invested now in

the INTERNIST/CADUCEUS activity. The payoff is q r t t ~

a way down the road.

I have tried to figure out what distinguishes our situation

from the ones described by my copanelists here. Part of

the

difference is in the nature of the expertise. Jack Myers

happens to be a super-pro in the medical reasoning process.

He set his sights at the beginning on a very tough problem.

While we have made tremendous inroads in that problem,

we certainly have not solved it. I would like

to

put

this

in the

_context

of

my

interpretation of

what Artificial Intelligence

is all about.

A paradigm from the beginning of artificial-intelligence

investigations that has proved

to

be very helpful has been

this. People intere-sted in understanding reasoning

and

modeling reasoning should tackle

tough

problems-

not with

the goal

of

making money by solving those problems but

because by working

with tough

problems we may develop

·insights

that

will have some kind

of

fundamental import.

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Expert

Systems

There will be new ideas. I think that is why chess has been

so helpful. Toy problems have led to insights that we could

not have

had

any other way.

The

value of those insights

has been considerable, although hard to quantify precisely,

since the contribution is indirect. I think that the kind of

work we are doing falls into that general paradigm. I think

that we are doing basic research in Artificial Intelligence.

Winston

I

think

parachute packers still have

to

jump

once in a while.

To draw an analogy, would you

be

more comfortable being

diagnosed by CADUCEUS

than

by a dart throw at the

medical listings

in

the

telephone book?

Pople

I would be much happier_with Jack Myers running CADU

CEUS. CADUCEUS is a beautiful tool in Jack Myers s

hands. I

don t trust

it with anybody else

at

this point.

avis

That brings up a question I

am

sure you must have heard

hundreds of times. A mistake

made

when configuring a

VAX is going to cost only a few thousand dollars.

If

you

misinterpret

an

oil-well log,

it

might cost you a million or

so, but nobody dies. What

are

your thoughts about the

social, ethical, and legal issues involved with using medical

tools based on Artificial Intelligence?

Pople

There

will probably

be

a period where those

of

us who

build these systems

are

at considerable risk. Should w

be

covered by some

sort

of comprehensive insurance like

workmen s compensation? No individual

program should

bear the

whole risk of

the

major lawsuits as we learn about

this.

At

some point, clearly, . he tide will turn. Physicians

will be at risk i f they fail to consult these programs.

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Discussion

98

Davis

Medical malpractice, is defined

as

doing as well as an

established colleague. Essentially it is defined by peer review.

A physician who does not look

in

a

textbook

now is guilty

of

negligence. The day may come when a physician who

does use the new technology and makes a mistake will

be

in

trouble; a physician who does not use

it and

makes a

mistake will

be negligent.

Pople

In terms of the questions of social issues and acceptance by

the medical community, I am

not

concerned that physicians

are as conservative as some people think. They are quick

adopters of new technologies that

can

be demonstrated to

be

of

value to them. Our experience is that there are a lot

of good physicians waiting in the wings for us

to

bail out,

to

use Professor Winston s analogy.

e

have very positive

reactions from people who have seen

the

system

at

work.

Davis

One of the things that all of

our

panelists share is geographic

location. Have you found that your recruiting has been more

difficult because of your East Coast location?

aker

People do like

the

West Coast,

and

once they are

situated

there, they

tend to

like to

stay

there. The larger problem

for Schlumberger has been

that

we

are

not in a major

metropolitan area.

Kraft

Digital has

had

some success recruiting people because

it is a growing, nurturing environment.

But

there are

not

a lot of people

out

there,

and

there

is a lot of com

petition for scarce top-level resources.

That

is why we

have

turned

more

to

training our own people as well as

trying to recruit from the outside.

It

is difficult

to

com

pete with someone who likes the West Coast life-style.

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Expert

Systems

Winston

Many of us who have visited electronics firms in the Palo

Alto area have been astonished

at the

turbulence

of the

personnel. Do you perceive similar turbulence with artificial

intelligence workers as more companies enter the field? If

so do you have any thoughts about whether

the

scarcity of

artificial-intelligence workers will require you to do anything

special with respect to

trying

to keep

them?

To

be

more

precise do you have any fears that all of the people who

are getting good

at

this are going

to

go off

and

form

their

own companies?

raft

That is always a possibility. The only thing you can do is give

them

all

the

tools they need

and the

management

support

and flexibility to do the things

they

want. For instance

being a vendor we have enough

hardware

for everyone to

work with.

It

is

important

to have computer power

the

right

terminals and a management structure that appreciates the

fact

that they

are walking on

the

leading edge

of

technology

not a gangplank.

Winston

I would like to

talk

a little bit about university

and

industry

interaction. From my perspective I would like Digital and

Schlumberger

to

give us space people

and

money in roughly

that order. I wonder what you feel you would like to see the

universities do. In particular would you like us to do things

in ways different from what we are doing now?

raft

I like to see university people who

want

to work with

industry

on problems that

may

have practical application.

I would like

to

see more university people visit industry

and

more industry people visit the universities.

Pople

I have been extraordinarily lucky to have someone with

the

expertise

of

Jack Myers willing to work with me all this

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Discussion 100

time. That is one of

the

things that industry

can

provide for

people who are interested from the academic side.

Industry

can also provide interesting tough problems. Joint research

at this

level has

the

potential to be extremely rewarding.

aker

The

relationship between

industry and the

university

in

Artificial Intelligence is vital.

Our

core research group does

most

of

our

artificial-intelligence work.

But

we also use

people in the universities we send money

and

we have

outside contracts with consulting organizations.· To do our

job requires a combination

of

these resources. As long as

resources are short this

type

of interaction is going to have

to

continue.

Winston

There

is

an

alternative view having to do

with the

issue

of whether

we as a country are

eating our

seed corn in

this

area.

It

is

an

issue we must all face soon if

the

universities

are

to continue to provide industries

with

new ideas.

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