The United States

Japan´s fifth-generation computer effort may have caught the imagination of the popular press, but work leading to this next generation of computing in the United States has its roots in research conducted for 20 years. Artificial intelligence is one example. The quantity of research is considerable, but it has been scattered among some 40 universities and 30 major corporations. That piecemeal approach is changing, however, and engineering and computer science resources, both corporate and academic, are coming together, in part as a response to the national Japanese effort and in part due to the ever-increasing cost of microelectronics research. There is also a growing realization that cooperative research between otherwise competing commercial companies need not threaten market share, but rather is necessary for strength in a highly competitive international marketplace.