Intelligent design versus solving artificial problems-artificial intelligence research at the cross-roads

The major hypothesis of the paper is that artificial intelligence research has reached a point where two diverging future paths could be followed. On the one hand, one could take the development of technical possibilities and try to find problems that fit to existing technical solutions. We call this route "solving artificial problems". On the other hand we propose an attractive field of future AI research, which concentrates on the design of empirically relevant solutions for man-machine interactions by splitting decisions in an intelligent way, into those taken by machines and those taken by human groups. Using the notion of intelligent design we give some examples to illuminate our case.<>