Knowledge engineering (KE) has now provided some effective techniques for formalization of knowledge about goals and actions. These techniques could open new areas of research to statisticians. Experimental systems designed to assist users of statistics have been constructed in experiment design, data analysis, technique application, and technique selection. Knowledge formalization has also been used in experimental programs to assist statisticians in doing data analysis and in building consultation systems. The best-explored application of KE techniques is building consultation systems. It is now a promising area for development. Analogies with successful artificial intelligence AI applications in other fields suggest other statistical applications worth exploring. Opening new areas to research and providing new tools to users would make considerable changes in the use and production of statistical techniques. However, applying currently available KE techniques will lead to more work for statisticians, not less.

The traditions of image processing and knowledge engineering have developed separately. Work on AI vision systems lies between the two traditions but only recently has attention been given to combining practical imaging systems with methods for exploiting knowledge in interpreting the contents of an image. Five general approaches to combining knowledge based expert systems with imaging technologies are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the requirement for techniques which transform a pixel array into a symbolic form suitable for interpretation, and current obstacles to a general solution. Interpretation of biomedical images is particularly problematic because of statistical, structural and temporal variation in morphology of objects and structures. Some ways in which knowledge of shape, structure, and object classifications may contribute to this interpretation are discussed. The survey focuses on biomedical images but many of the issues are of general relevance to work in image understanding.

It is often claimed that it is easy to write expert systems. This claim was examined by monitoring experienced programmers learning to use the S.I knowledge engineering tool. Their achievements and difficulties were examined using a framework that has emerged from previous research into novices learning to use standard programming languages. Even though the experienced programmers all had several years' experience of programming in more than one standard language, there were similarities between their difficulties in learning to use S.I and the difficulties of complete novices learning to program in standard languages.

The experienced programmers were however able to overcome their initial difficulties fairly quickly, but it is argued that complete novices would not find it so easy to do so. Also the experienced programmers did take time to develop a repertoire of schemeta for representing different kinds of factual, judgemental and procedural knowledge. It was concluded that in S.1, as with other programming languages and softwares tools, it is easy to learn how to do simple things, but difficult, even for experienced programmers to learn how to do more complex things.

No criticism of S.1 is implied. S.1 was found to be a suitable vehicle for introducing non-trivial knowledge engineering concepts, and we believe that similar difficulties would occur in learning to use other knowledge engineering tools.

This paper describes some of our experience gathered during the development of an expert system, the press lineup advisor, in which we used the commercially available expert system development tool, S.1.™ Discussion includes: (1) how we used S. l to develop a system which solves a configuration problem; (2) difficulties we encountered when applying S.1 to this specific reasoning problem; (3) limitations of S.1 from both problem-solving and operational points of view and (4) issues remaining to be solved with respect to generalization of the system.

Like other industrialized countries, France is currently enjoying a vogue for artificial intelligence and, generally, for hardware and software components and structures which will be needed for the design and implementation of the computer applications of the 1990s.

Since public announcement of MITI's Fifth Generation Project in October 1981, the French scientific and industrial communications have exhibited increasing enthusiasm for AI languages, expert systems, man-computer interaction, novel computer architectures, and knowledge-based computer systems as a whole. The choice of the Prolog language for the Japanese project has stimulated many French industrialists to be aware of the existence of a basic AI tool designed mainly in France.

In spite of the present fashion, often maintained by the journalistic milieu, it would be inaccurate to say that the French fifth generation project goes back to the Japanese announcement. The MITI project has certainly been a catalyst of ministerial and industrial awareness, but the bulk of ongoing projects stem from earlier work most often funded by government agencies.

In spite of the current thrust in AI and the centralizing habit in France, a “flagship” AI project cannot be identified. French Research and Development initiatives in artificial intelligence in general, and expert systems in particular, correspond more to a set of distinct projects. These frequently complement each other in technical scope and in their scientific and industrial objectives.