#Expert Systems

How the field that had been humbled by the first winter found a commercially viable path forward through the expert systems approach — going narrow, going deep, and going to work. The full story of AI's first commercial era, from DENDRAL and MYCIN to XCON and the billion-dollar industry that grew around knowledge engineering, and what it revealed about the nature of expertise itself.

The full narrative of AI's second great contraction — told from the inside, through the experiences of the researchers who built the boom and watched it collapse. The collapse of the expert systems industry, the dissolution of the LISP machine market, the reduction of DARPA funding, and the underground movement that kept the neural network approach alive through the cold.

How MYCIN, XCON, and thousands of corporate AI systems made real money by going narrow — and how the field that had been humbled by the first AI winter found a commercially viable path forward. The rise of expert systems: AI's first commercial era, and the seeds of its second collapse that were planted in its very success.

The expert systems boom collapsed almost as quickly as it had risen. The LISP machine market imploded overnight. DARPA cut funding. And for the second time in AI's history, the field contracted, researchers left, and the most pessimistic observers began to wonder whether the project was fundamentally misguided. The full story of AI's second near-death experience — and the underground movement that kept the neural network flame alive through the cold.