#XCON

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.

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.