Abstract

EDITORIAL The Intelligence of Architectural Research Marci S. Uihlein, Executive Editor The three-volume The Handbook for Artificial Intelligence, proposed in 1975 and finally University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign published in 1981, was intended to be an encyclopedic documentation of the first 25 years of work in the field. The editors had an explicit goal to elevate the specializa- tion by compiling the array of existing research, capturing the state of artificial intel- ligence. Making it accessible to researchers beyond computer science, the collection of important AI research—intentionally not synthesized—was intended to serve as a launching point for others and other disciplines. The evolution of the computer was a driver for this research as was the complexity of the problems to be solved. The first immediate barrier for AI research was defining “intelligence.” Language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, models of cognition, and knowledge representation were dissected into small solvable tasks before they could be taught to machines, and only after each task could be understood by the researchers. Seventy years after artificial intelligence became a focus of research, AI still thrives; machine intelligence is perva- sive in research, everyday objects, and cultural representations. The Handbooks themselves are interesting as