For several years, I worked in a group doing research in Expert Systems (rule based programming) AI. I wrote code, wrote and published peer-reviewed papers, an

For several years, I worked in a group doing research in Expert Systems (rule based programming) AI. I wrote code, wrote and published peer-reviewed papers, and gave talks, including one at Stanford, one at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, some businesses, etc. We developed a language that was offered as a software product. I taught the language to my wife; she did just brilliantly with it, but she was brilliant -- Valedictorian, PBK, Summa Cum Laude, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, NSF Fellow, etc. At the time and since to the present, my view is the same: Expert systems do not have promise of being useful and are an example of the OP's "innovation" that went "south", "tech that never quite worked out". Sorry 'bout that.