Summary

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. This rather unfortunate term, to some signifying a blasphemic overestimation of technology, has brought this sector of knowledge into discredit even before it produced its first results. Therefore it developed more or less in an underground fashion for decades, until the first popular applications with the more sophisticated chess computer programs emerged. Today, there is hardly any computer manufacturer or software company that is not concerned with Artificial Intelligence. Instead of Artificial Intelligence, the abbreviation AI is used to avoid any possible misinterpretation due to the claim to absolutism of the word intelligence. Knowledge processing as opposed to and in continuation of data processing would undoubtedly have been a more accurate term. Whereas some areas of AI research, such as the understanding of natural language, the recognition of patters and pictures, robot science and the automatic deduction systems have barely progressed beyong laboratory tests, expert systems are already used in practice and software tools, so-called shells for the customised production of expert systems, are available on the market at realistic prices. To date, there is no known application in the graphic techniques sector, besides the’ interactive user guidance of a pew type of CCD scanner, the Scitex Smart Scanner, and in the already announced ambitpus aims of the Crosfield-CSI Expert Publishing System, though there is much talk of intentions to tackle certain technical printing problems more effectively with AI, expert systems. We have compiled the following Special Report to provide our Members with detailed information concerning these new possibilities as well as to propose their application.