Xcon
Rule-based expert system developed at CMU in the 1980s to configure VAX computers, one of the first commercially successful AI systems deployed at scale.
2 milestones
Second AI Winter
From approximately 1987 to 1993, AI research entered a second sustained contraction as commercial expert-system vendors collapsed, the Lisp machine market failed, and DARPA substantially reduced funding for AI programmes following unmet expectations from the preceding boom.
XCON (R1) Expert System Developed by John P. McDermott at Carnegie Mellon University
John P. McDermott at Carnegie Mellon University developed R1 (later named XCON), a rule-based expert system built in OPS5, in collaboration with Digital Equipment Corporation. Deployed operationally by DEC in 1980, it automatically configured VAX-11/780 computer orders, replacing a labour-intensive manual process.