The Semantic Web

by Paul Harmon

Many readers know that I have a background in artificial intelligence (AI) and wrote an expert systems newsletter throughout the 1980s. As the 1990s progressed, I continued to watch as various applications of AI rolled out into the commercial arena. In the mid 1990s, for example, I suspect that the greatest income went to those who offered semantic net products, usually offered as services, that did things such as examine credit card charges for fraud. By the late 1990s, vendors using AI in data mining products and in Internet personalization products were probably making the most. And, throughout the whole time, natural language programs that "read" or "listened to" users and generated spoken responses kept getting better.