Artificial intelligence: hype or reality?

Artificial intelligence is not just hype, as many working applications use AI techniques. However, we have yet to develop a system that spans the full spectrum of intelligent behavior. For example, building a system that an make sensible decisions about unfamiliar situations in everyday, nonspecialist domains remains difficult. Nevertheless, it seems likely that applications like distributed blackboards will continue apace in specialist domains. This quiet revolution can make a significant contribution to our lives. Meanwhile, we can also expect progress toward the popular idea of AI manifested in human-like robots as we progress in simulating vision, language, common sense, and adaptability behaviors.