Request for Information on AI based search engines

[Nick Arnett]

>Does any such "Artificial Intelligence" powered engine exist anywhere for any
>purpose?  In Library Reference, in Defense Industry, in Commerical business?
>Again--I don't mean an engine that says "Narrow search by looking for
>word in the title?" or the rudimentary type of search strategy, but one that
>responds to the particluar query of the user.
>
>Of particular significance would be **WWW** search engines that work
>intelligently-- that is, interact with the user.  Again, Are there any?
>Have you used them?  Where are they?

AI is generally considered a negative word in the commercial market, since
there were so many well-publicized failures... but our engine (Verity's)
certainly came out of the AI business, such as it was in the mid-80s.

However, I'm not quite sure that I understand what you mean by, "one that
responds to the particular query of the user."  In theory, that's what all
search engines try to do, from stupid Boolean matches to the mind-reading
wizards found on the starship Enterprise.

We are building an increasing amount of interactivity and learning into our
engine.  For example, clustering and summarizing search results helps the
user narrow a query without having to learn the query language.  (See
http://www.verity.com/demos/d/Topic_Demos/newclustering.html)

I'd be curious to hear the librarian point of view on how search tools
might behave better in terms of automatic categorization and learning from
the user.  In addition to being Verity's evangelist, I've recently become
the product manager for advanced technology.

Nick Arnett
Verity Inc.
narnett at verity.com