Artificial Intelligence and the Management Science Practitioner: Expert Systems—Getting a Handle on a Moving Target

This is the first appearance of a new column—Artificial intelligence and the management science practitioner. In recent years, interest in artificial intelligence (AI), especially expert systems (ES), has been explosive. We will try to bring you news of the latest directions in AI/ES, examples of innovative work, comments on what worked well and what didn't, information on new software and hardware products, and highlights relating progress in AI/ES to the state of the art in modeling and decision support. Our purpose is to help answer three AI/ES questions facing the MS/OR professional today: (1) What are artificial intelligence and expert systems? (2) What in AI/ES is of value? How are AI and MS related? (3) How might the “AI/ES wave” affect MS/OR?