Inference Corporation was an American software company that specialized in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

systems.

History

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

-based ''Inference'' was founded in 1979. In the 1990s they built a case-based computer program for

Compaq Computer Corporation Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...

that would enable dealing with a situation where "a computer printer turns out a blurry and smeared page" without having to call a

help desk A help desk is a department or person that provides assistance and information, usually for electronic or computer problems. In the mid-1990s, research by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University studied the value of an organization's help des ...

. Although such software already existed, the breakthrough was that it was small enough to fit "on three

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s." The company's ''Automated Reasoning Tool'' (ART), initially implemented on a

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

, subsequently made available on PCs, has been extended to ART-IM, an ''Information Management'' package; the product line originated in 1988. Ford and

AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...

are among the household-known corporations that use ''Inference'' software to enhance customer service. ''Inference'' was acquired by eGain Corporation in 2000. Prior to that, ''Inference'' acquired 1981-founded ''Computer Mathematics Corporation'', marketer of ''

SMP (computer algebra system) Symbolic Manipulation Program (SMP) was a computer algebra system designed by Chris A. Cole and Stephen Wolfram at Caltech circa 1979. It was initially developed in the Caltech physics department with contributions from Geoffrey C. Fox, Jeffrey ...

''; ''Inference'' made another acquisition the year before they themselves were acquired by ''eGain''.

Automated Reasoning Tool

The Automated Reasoning Tool (ART) is a system designed by Paul Haley, Chuck Williams, Brad Allen, and Mark Wright, to design rule-based knowledge representations with options for frame and procedural methods of

knowledge base In computer science, a knowledge base (KB) is a set of sentences, each sentence given in a knowledge representation language, with interfaces to tell new sentences and to ask questions about what is known, where either of these interfaces migh ...

representation. ART's syntax influenced

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

's derived

CLIPS CLIPS (C Language Integrated Production System) is a public-domain software tool for building expert systems. The syntax and name were inspired by Charles Forgy's OPS5. The first versions of CLIPS were developed starting in 1985 at the NASA Joh ...

in the mid-80s. ART is a derivative of

OPS5 OPS5 is a rule-based or production system computer language, notable as the first such language to be used in a successful expert system, the R1/XCON system used to configure VAX computers. The OPS (said to be short for "Official Production Sys ...

, with extensions, built for the Inference Corporation.

References

External links

* 1979 establishments in California 2000 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1979 American companies disestablished in 2000 Computer companies established in 1979 Computer companies disestablished in 2000 Defunct software companies of the United States Defunct computer companies based in California {{tech-company-stub