ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role played by scientific establishments in the development of a particular scientific specialty, Artificial Intelligence (AI), a computer-related area which takes as its broad aim the construction of computer programs that model aspects of intelligent behaviour. The patterns of research in AI exhibit distinctive characteristics, forming a paradigmatic structure which includes such elements in the scientific activity as research tools, practices, techniques, methods, models, and theories, as well as the normative and evaluative aspects for selecting among them. Conflict in AI has been bound up with the focus on intelligence. Intelligence is not a socially or cognitively well-defined goal and every distinctive social group tends to have its own implicit definition, couched in terms of its own interests. In Britain during the 1940s, there was a similar flourishing of interest in general cybernetic concerns as occurred in the United States, and discussions of the possibility of machine thought were common.
