Artificial intelligence and expert systems in education: Progress, promise and problems

Abstract

It is not our purpose here to get into a deep analysis of the meanings and accepted definitions of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Indeed it appears that no universally accepted definitions exist, a fact that is bemoaned by some authors as a source of much confusion in the field and an open invitation to "exploit the hype - being generated about the field in popular and quasi-technical media" (Harris and Owens, 1986). In their opinion, the artificial half of AI is generally taken to meanman-made, but there is much disagreement and lack of definition as regards the term intelligence as used in this context. Some researchers even refuse to be associated with this term. For example, I once attended a seminar given by Gordon Pask the cybernetician and creator of the CASTE system of conversational CAI (a name often quoted in the AI literature), in which he argued that AI does not exist, on the grounds that:

1. if a machine were to act in a way that one recognised as being intelligent, then the machine will be intelligent (why the need for the prefix artificial), but
2. he has not as yet seen a machine that is truly intelligent and doubts if he ever will (on the grounds that, for him, true intelligence has an affective/ emotional component and he has never seen machine display emotion).