for purposes of this discussion will be limited to business applications such as would be of interest to corporate America. An analysis of predictions and projections regarding future developments and applications of expert systems should also show the direction analysts believe the workplace of the future will take as a result of being shaped and altered by the implementation of expert systems over the next several years. Analysts have offered a variety of hopeful suggestions regarding possible uses of expert systems and the consequences of implementing these systems, though the actual consequences may be quite different form what has been predicted. To date, expert systems are following a clear path toward providing new decision-making tools in the office environment, and the degree of success found for these systems will determine their direction and proliferation in the future.
An article in the British magazine The Economist (1989) makes it clear that a change is coming in business administration with a new kind of automation. This is seen as the next development in the overall automation of the workplace, with this automation seen as a progression from the earlier, non-automated office to a more fully automated workplace. The first round of automation automated routine tasks in the sixties and seventies, leading in many cases to reductions in company workforces. The coming round will automate decisionmaking itself, which could give workers more time for creative work and reduce the repetitive tasks they now have to perform. This new round of automation comes under the heading of "expert systems." This is the technology that will take on a corporate role and that promises to change the ways in which companies compete and the ways in which people work with machines and even with each other. Expert systems imitate the way people think, following the long-standing hope of AI developers. The designers of expert systems pi...