o  The issues underlying this effort to constuct a roadmap
 	   include:
 
 		o  ARPA has supported AI for 10 years
 		o  ARPA investment in AI > $35M
 		o  Contribution of AI to solution of DoD problems
 		   has been questioned (e.g., by Whitaker of ODDR&E)
 		o  Need to test/evaluate/prove capability of AI to
 		   solve real Defense problems
 		o  Not sound to have such large (75% ?) fraction of
 		   support of AI field come from one source (ARPA)
 		o  Potential of AI to increase effectiveness of
 		   many Defense systems and operations
 		o  Potential impact of AI on US economy
 
 		o  And so the need for a clear roadmap (plan) showing
 
 			o  Application objectives
 			o  Scientific objectives
 			o  Organizational structure
 			o  Test/evaluation mechanisms
 
 	o  Guidance from ARPA front office
 
 		o  Develop roadmap
 
 		o  Increase application-oriented effort
 
 			o  Without increased ARPA/IPTO funding for AI
 
 		o  Get other agencies to support more of AI
 
 			o  Especially more of the basic research
 
 			o  Get help from OMB in arranging it
 
 o  ACCOMPLISHMENTS DUE MAINLY OR IN LARGE PART TO AI R&D
    AND NOW USED BY DOD
 
 	o  Time sharing
 
 		o  Created a 200-company industry
 		o  Now used by many DoD organizations
 		o  Value of time sharing and interactive
 		   computing in software development and
 		   maintenance extolled by FCDSSA
 
 			o  FCDSSA using GENIE system
 			   developed by UCB with ARPA support
 
 	o  Stack (pushdown list)
 
 		o  Basic programming technique
 		o  Now used in almost all programming
 
 	o  Hash coding (associative addressing)
 
 		o  Basic programming technique
 		o  Now widely used in storing data in
 		   primary memory and secondary storage
 
 	o  List structure
 
 		o  Basic programming technique and data 
 		   structure
 		o  Now used in most symbol-manipulation work
 
 	o  Interactive programming and debugging
 
 		o  Now used in several DoD programming shops
 		   (e.g., AFDSSC, FCDSSA) and commercial
 		   computer and software firms (e.g., TRW, CSC,
 		   Honeywell, DEC, parts of IBM)
 
 	o  Mathematical assistant programs
 
 		o  MACSYMA, REDUCE
 		o  Used to aid applied mathematicians
 		o  Automatically solve difficult indefinite
 		   integrals, reduce comples polynomials
 		o  Used by NRL, ERDA, NASA, others
 
 	o  Other specialist problem solvers
 
 		o  DENDRAL
 
 			o  Mass spectrometry expert
 
 		o  MYCIN
 
 			o  Medical diagnosis
 			o  Recommends chemotherapy
 
 	o  Computer controlled manipulators
 
 		o  Scheinman arm
 
 			o  Used by:
 
 				o  JPL
 				o  SRI
 				o  GM
 				o  NBS
 				o  Univ. of Illinois
 				o  Purdue Univ.
 				o  Boston Univ.
 
 -------

∂2-APR-75  0542		network site ISI
 Date:  2 APR 1975 0541-PDT
 From: LICKLIDER at USC-ISI
 Subject: Easter Message
 To:   Feigenbaum at SU-AI, Uncapher, Stockham at UTAH,
 To:   Pratt at USC-ECL, Wintz at PURDUE, Dertouzos,
 To:   Dertouzos.MAC at MIT-MULTICS, Cheatham at HARV-10
 cc:   Licklider
 
 	The purpose of this Easter note is to bring you up to date
 on a development in ARPA that concerns me greatly -- and will, I think,
 also concern you.  It is the continued and accelerating (as I
 perceive it) tendency, on the part of the ARPA front office, to devalue
 basic research and the effort to build up an advanced science/technology
 base in favor of applied research and development aimed at directly
 solving on an ad hoc basis some of the pressing problems of the DoD.
 Let me be clear that I am strongly in favor of ARPA's contributing
 maximally to the solution of pressing DoD problems.  What concerns
 me is that, whereas I see the main hope in the creation of new methods
 and far-advanced systems based on new methods, the prevailing direction
 in ARPA is to do research within the specific
 contexts of military problems -- and not to do research
 that does not have a military 'buyer' ready to take it over as soon as
 the concept gets well formulated.
 
 	The present indications of this direct-
 application-oriented trend are strong pressures form the new Director,
 George Heilmeier, that IPTO 'redirect' the university AI efforts
 to work on problems (vehicles) that have real DoD validity, criticisms
 of the Speech Understanding and Image
 Understanding programs for not being tied directly into application
 projects that will be taken over and supported by the Services, strong
 emphasis on Software Technology efforts that will have effects in the
 short term (with strong pressure to de-emphasize longer-term research
 such as that on fully automatic programming), and, in general, a
 tendency to evaluate IPTO programs by asking people in the DoD offices
 (which would use or preside over the use of eventual applications of
 our stuff) what they think of the programs.
 
 	In the case of AI (or Intelligent Systems, IS, as the sub-
 element of the IPTO program is called in local paperwork -- IS now
 includes three sub-subelements: AI, Knowledge-Based Computer System
 Applications, and Intelligent Terminals), the situation is complicated
 by the fact that ARPA has been supporting basic research at a
 rather high level for more than ten years (has spent more than
 $50 million on it), and it is natural for a new director, or even an
 old one, to ask, 'What have we gotten out of it in terms of improvements
 in national defense?'.  [Supermodern punctuation convention right
 there!]  Unfortunately, most people who are asked that question answer
 'I don't know' or even 'nothing'.  IPTO tries to establish that pushdown
 lists, interactive debugging in source language, and even a
 big part of time sharing came out of AI and that AI systems such as
 Dendral, Mycin, and Macsyma actually do have expert-human-level
 capabilities or (in some areas) better, but there is in fact a big
 gulf between the perceptual sets of AI buffs and DoD administrators,
 and the latter really mean, when they ask about the payoff, where are
 the intelligent weapon systems?  They would understand intelligent
 support systems, but weapon systems dominate support systems in the
 prevailing psychological space, and even the Secretary of Defense has
 to work at it to get his people to realize that more is spent on
 operations and maintenance than on personnel and more on personnel than
 on procurement.  In any event, this perceived lack of specific
 payoff from $50 million is a major source of dissonance.
 
 	Needless to say, we have all been working hard to accomplish
 two things:
 
 	1.  To educate the new Director into a stronger appreciation
 	of truly advanced technology and into a realization that
 	the future is not to be won by making a lot of minor
 	technological advances and moving them immediately into the
 	Services.  We point to time sharing and interactive computing,
 	systems like DENDRAL and MACSYMA, languages like LISP, the
 	ARPANET, highly realistic graphics with brightness
 	gradations, color, and kinematics, and other such exemplars
 	of real advances that have already been made and have had
 	major effects.  We point to the big advances that are now in
 	the offing -- about which more later.
 
 	2.  To improve the connections between IPTO programs and the
 	DoD offices that ought to know about them, appreciate them,
 	say good things about them, and be ready to take over and
 	apply their applicable outputs.  There is no doubt that
 	IPTO is (and always has been) weak in respect of that kind of
 	connection with the Department of which it is a part.  During
 	the time he was in DDR&E, George Heilmeier evidently heard
 	a lot of criticism of ARPA, and of IPTO in particular, from
 	the various DoD offices, and now he is determined to do
 	something about it.  The fact is, we in IPTO were working
 	very hard to do something about it, but now we are under
 	strong Directoral pressure to accelerate the movement.
 
 Many of my remarks at the recent PI Conference were related
 to what I am telling you now, but I mean what I say here to be a 
 stronger statement of the problem and an assertion that 
 the problem is deeper than I then realized.
 
 	During the time since George Heilmeier arrived, we have
 taken advantage of every opportunity to brief him and discuss
 programs with him.  He has given us a lot of time and participated
 actively in the discussions.  He is bright and energetic; there is
 no problem about getting his attention.  The problem is that the
 frame of reference with which he enters the discussions is basically
 quite different from the frames of reference that are 
 natural, comfortable, and familiar to most of us in IPTO -- and, I
 think, to most of you.  In my frame -- or in our frames -- it is a
 fundamental axiom that computers and communications are crucially
 important, that getting computers to understand natural
 language and to respond to speech will have profound consequences
 for the military, that the ARPANET and satellite packet communications
 and ground and air radio networks are major steps forward into a new
 era of command and control, that AI techniques will make it possible
 to interpret satellite photographs automatically, and
 that 10↑10-bit nanosec memories and 10↑12-bit microsecond memories
 and 10↑15-bit millisecond memories are more desirable than gold.  In
 George's frame, and to a greater or lesser (I think the latter)
 extent also in Alex Tachmindji's frame, none of those things is
 axiomatic -- and the basic question is, who in DoD needs it and is
 willing to put up some money on it now?  We are trying hard to
 decrease the dissonance between the frames, but we are not making
 good progress.  As one of my colleagues put it Friday, 'I think we are
 slowly holding our own with George'.
 
 	A little over a week ago, we had our 'Apportionment Review'
 in which adjustments to FY 76 funding levels were discussed.  We
 have not heard yet exactly what the front office's conclusions were
 or will be (though we have been interactiong on the question); we
 expect to have a written statement on Tuesday, along with the other
 ARPA offices.  My expectation is that there will be major deferrals
 in all our basic research programs.  But we shall
 know more definitely very soon, so I'll not speculate further on that
 subject.  The important thing will be not so much the size of the
 deferrals as whether they are defined as hedges against Congressional
 fund cutting (Such deferrals are necessary because we do not yet know
 what the action of the Congressional committees will be.) or as
 diversions of funds from basic research (or even exploratory
 development projects that do not have definite technology-transfer
 routes established) into definite applications.
 
 	As I mentioned at the PI Conference, the concept of
 'Silver Bullets' is important in ARPA, in George Heilmeier's view
 of what ARPA should accomplish.  One of his main silver-bullet areas
 is underwater sound and sonar, and IPTO is in the process of 'buying
 in' on the HASP Project (Ed Feigenbaum's AI approach).  Another is
 maintenance of vehicles with the aid of sensors and indicators that
 predict needs for maintenance, and we are trying to establish the
 fact that computers necessarily must play a central role in
 maintenance diagnosis and prognosis.  A third silver-bullet area is
 Software Technology -- an all-out effort to solve DoD's software
 problem(s).  (This is an IPTO area, and we are working hard to formulate
 it.  George wants to get the Services and the software houses
 into the effort, as do I, since I have embraced the basic goal of this
 and see the Services and the companies that do DoD's software work
 as essentially the targets (and we need to have the targets working with
 and for us).  An issue in ST is the degree to which AP can be kept in
 the program as the main hope of achieving a really fundamental solution.
 An important staffer on an important Congressional Committee seems
 (still) to be set against AP and even against ST, and all the other 
 powers that be seem to be constitutionally against anything that won't
 get finished while they are still in their present jobs.
 
 	At present, George's list of important things IPTO can do for
 DoD is:  
 
 	Get computers to read Morse Code in the presence of other code
 and noise.
 
 	Get computers to identify/detect key words in a stream of
 speech.
 
 	Develop speech-understanding systems (if there really is a 
 clear use for them in the military).  [This is a major come-about
 during the last few days.  Earlier, he was very cool toward SUS.]
 
 	Solve DoD's 'Software Problem'.
 
 	Make a real contribution to Command and Control.  [George is
 not fully convinced about packet communications, yet, but he thinks
 we may have something in there somewhere.]
 
 	Help the Tactical Technology Office do a good thing
 in sonar.
 
 	[end of list]
 
 	Sadly, that list does not include some of the main items
 that are on mine.  It is too late on Easter evening to give my 
 full list, but here is one item from each of our seven
 programs:
 
 Intelligent Systems
 
 	Develop a system that will guide not-sufficiently-
 trained maintenance men through the maintenance of complex equipment.
 
 Advanced Memory Technology
 
 	Learn how to handle very large, distributed, redundant 
 databases.
 
 Image Understanding
 
 	Develop automatic photointerpretation.
 
 Climate Dynamics
 
 	Develop the basis in modeling and array computing for 
 evaluation of effects of major human projects/activities on climate.
 [As you know, ARPA is transferring this
 one to NSF -- but what I listed is more or less accomplished.]
 
 
 Software Technology
 
 	Take the excessive cost, delay, and error out of software
 development and maintenance.
 
 Speech Processing
 
 	Make it possible for people to communicate with computers in
 natural, continuous speech.
 
 	[Let me list a second item here.]
 
 	Achieve good-quality, natural, recognizable speech with
 500 to 3000 bits per second (through commpression) so it can be
 made secure for DoD communication --  and also master the handling of
 speech in packet communication networks.
 
 Integrated C↑3 Systems
 
 	Provide an integrated, coherent, secure, effective computer-
 communication base of Command and Control -- i.e., an ARPANET-like
 system with additional media (satellites, ground radio,
 aircraft radio), security, message services, database services, and so
 on, with the emphasis on integration/coherence.
 
 [end of list]
 
 	What are we going to do about all this?  Here in IPTO we are
 going to continue our interaction with George and get off to a strong
 start with the new Deputy Director who will be coming on board in a
 couple of weeks.  We are going to try to sell them our view of the 
 world, but we are going to be moving closer to their view, surely,
 in the process.  We will be pressing on you in ways not natural to
 my philosophy -- not to get you to do research you do not want to do
 or to make compromises you do not want to make, but to get you to see 
 the picture clearly as it is seen from here so you can make wise and
 correct decisions.  And we will be asking you, as soon as we can
 arrange it, to come in and meet and try to influence the new Director
 and Deputy Director.  Meanwhile, we are open to advice and counsel --
 indeed, need it and will appreciate it greatly.
 
 	On the positive side, let me say that a lot of the offices in 
 DoD and elswhere in the government have by now heard of IPTO and
 are impppressed with the technology the IPTO Community 
 has created.  There is some real support out there in the technical
 offices of DoD.  Also on the positive side, let me say that the IPTO
 Program Managers have been doing a marvelous job.  Their performance
 on the second day of the Apportionment Review was superb, and George
 Heilmeier realized he had really been in a session (and he acknowledged
 it).
 
 	On the negative side, the fact is that we are not making as much
 progress as I think necessary, and the timing in relation to my own
 plans is very poor.  As most of you know, I have been thinking
 in terms of going back to MIT in September, and, unless, I can
 get a strong candidate-successor before the new Director,
 I am afraid he might take the occasion of my leaving to put
 a strongly applications-oriented person into the job.
 
 	My reporting on the problem at this time is not intended to
 sound a general quarters alarm; it is to make sure that you are aware
 that a serious problem exists in ARPA-IPTO and demands profound
 consideration by all of you.  Please share this information with those
 in your organizations who should ponder the matter and will respect its
 sensitivity, and please call me to discuss any or all aspects of it.
 I'll keep you informed as the situation develops.
 
 	
 [Time Lapse.  Now it is Tuesday Morning.]
 
 	Yesterday afternoon, Dave Russell and I spent another hour
 and a half with Heilmeier and Tachmindji.  As a result, my perception
 of the situation is a bit more definite.  I'll add a few paragraphs
 to Sunday's message (which I decided to hold until after the Monday
 meeting) and send it off to you.
 
 	The 'directoral guidance' re Intelligent Systems is
 now quite specific in these respects:  ARPA does not want to continue
 to fund the field in an open-ended stream-of-research way; it
 wants to redirect most of the AI research it is funding in such a way
 as to test or measure the present capability of the field to
 serve real DoD application needs, and it would like to see the support
 of basic research in AI either taken over by an agency such as NSF
 or, at least, shared more equitably than it is now.  The transition
 will be handled insofar as possible to avoid damage to the field, but
 the transition will be made.  In some instances, contracts in the
 IS area, or largely in the IS area, will be extended on a short-term
 (e.g., 6 mo.) basis while redirection takes place.
 Dave and I are directed to discuss with other agencies the assumption,
 on their part, of a larger share of the over-all support of the
 field.  For the time being, the over-all IPTO IS budget is not to be
 reduced, but it is necessary that the same funding level now cover
 some application efforts.  Definite allocations of funds within the
 IS budget have not been directed, but it is clear that George is
 determined to bring about the shift to application and will direct
 definite allocations if he is not satisfied with IPTO's progress in
 effecting the desired change in direction.
 
 	The Intelligent Terminals sub-area of IS, which is a new
 sub-area, planned to be funded in FY 76, is not touched by the
 direction just mentioned, and its funds are not part of the basic-
 plus-applied total that is supposed to be the same in FY 76 as in FY 75.
 The IT program has been planned in such a way that its application and
 technology-transfer aspects are clear and definite, so it does not
 come under the pressure to shift from basic to applied.
 
 	In Image Understanding, the direction is less definite, but the
 pressure is strong to achieve actual applications of results in
 image coding, image enhancement, and image restoration, and the
 sense is that IPTO will have to determine and make the case for the
 plausibility of a program in image interpretation  (alias, extraction
 of information from images, alias 'image understanding' in analogy
 with 'speech understanding') before actually setting out on an
 Image Understanding program.  Again, the cost of application and
 technology-transfer work will have to come out of a total budget that
 is not greater than last year's.
 
 	The third basic-research area (the third of the three
 IPTO Computer and Communication Sciences subelements) is Advanced
 Memory Technology.  It is almost wholly new in FY 76 and so does not
 come under the same kind of redirectional pressure as IS and IU.  The
 Very Large Database Systems part of AMT is set up with strong attention
 to application and technology transfer.  The Advanced Memory Concepts
 part has been planned as a quite-far-out program and therefore will
 have philosophical problems that may translate themselves into
 funding problems, but it is too early to tell just what will happen.
 The AMC Program Planning Committee (Berlekamp Commitee) is going
 to brief Heilmeier and others on (tentatively) April 17, and the
 situation will begin to clarify itself then.
 
 	Finally (in this report of what I learned yesterday and how
 it shaped my perception of what is going on), the feedback from our
 Apportionment Review is going to slip a bit, and I will not know today
 (as I think I indicated I would) exactly what the 'reapportionment
 guidance' is.
 
 	From what I have said, you can see clearly, I think, that
 we are at a watershed in the history of ARPA-IPTO.  Although the
 redirection is not wholly, or even to any large extent, in accord with
 my own philosophy of research support, it will at least remove or
 reduce the dissonance that has long characterized
 the relation of the IPTO program to the DoD organizations that are
 supposed to use the results of IPTO-supported R&D.  At the same time,
 it will introduce dissonance into the relation between IPTO and its
 basic-research contractors.  I am deeply concerned about my own role
 in the redirection -- whether to fight it, try to contain it, or
 join it wholeheartedly and try to steer it in such a way as to
 wind up with a larger, stronger, more productive enterprise.  I
 have been about half way between the first two alternatives, but 
 neither the half-way-between point nor either of the first two is
 really a workable position within ARPA.  It has to be either leave
 and fight or stay and join -- and it is clear that to adopt the former
 course precipitously would have a very bad effect on the program.
 And it is such an important -- in many ways, absolutely crucial --
 program!
 
 	One of the next steps is to get the IS PIs to come here to talk
 with George Heilmeier and Don Looft (who is the new Deputy Director,
 just now coming on board).  I'll be contacting some of you about that
 in the near future.
 
 	Meanwhile, please let me hear from you.  I need your counsel
 and help.
 
 [Another time lapse.  Now it is Wednesday morning.]
 
 	Let me end this message with a proposal: what the response of 
 IPTO and the contractor community should be to the situation I have
 described.  I am sure the situation is real.  I am not just in a
 temporarily gloomy state.  I have smoothed quite a bit, held back on
 composing such a piece as this for some time, not wanting to be an
 alarmist.  Indeed, I would much rather talk with each of you
 personally about the situation -- face to face or on the phone, so I
 could react to your individual responses in real time.  (I realize
 that the written word is no proper medium for this kind of 
 communication, but there is not time for so many individual
 interactions, and I think I should get on with this.)  Here is
 the proposal to which I invite your reaction:
 
 	IPTO should proceed promptly but deliberatlyy to construct
 a new modus operandi that will provide a new basis for very significant
 advances in computer and communications sciences, together with their
 application to improve U.S. defense, during the next ten years.
 The new game will wholeheartedly embrace the goal of bringing about
 applications of new technology.  It will continue the present
 devotion to major scientific and technological advances (and not
 devote much time or money to merely incremental improvements), but it
 will devote a much larger fraction of its resources to moving the
 advances into use.  It will not, over a long period, be a zero-sum game.
 (For a time, until it proves itself, it will have to operate with a
 level or declining budget.)  It will take
 advantage of every demonstrated success to increase both the basic
 research and the application budgets.  But most of the growth will be in
 the area of present lack, in computer and communication engineering and
 applications, and there will be a significant shift in the center of
 gravity of the contractor community.  The shift will give the
 university research groups an engineering arm , a marketplace,
 customers, users.  Several 'industrial' contractors and several
 Service laboratories will be brought into the community, and maybe
 one or two more of the FCRCs.  (The Lincoln Laboratory is the only
 'Federally Controlled Research Center' in the IPTO contractor
 community in a major way.)  Interaction
 between the university research groups and the engineering and
 application parts of the community will be real and strong.  The
 university people will learn more about possible DoD applications,
 and there will be less basis for the belief (which exists in some
 quarters) that there is an active shunning of research vehicles
 that might appear to be related to DoD applications.
 The interaction will strengthen the basic work because there
 will be more feeback from real tests of the new ideas and because
 every star needs an audience and performs best before a big and
 enthusiastic one.  Moreover, ideas will really start to move into
 use.  The presently vast gulf between how software is created in
 some of the IPTO-sponsored laboratories and how it is created
 in the shops that produce DoD's software will narrow.  It will take
 three years instead of thirty for spaghetti stacks
 to  get from LISP to COBOL.
 
 	In short, IPTO should correct the present imbalance, should
 build up an engineering and applications wing to make the contractor
 community strong and capable of meeting the challenges that are not
 now being met well.  This will remove the dissonance that is causing
 the present trouble and will turn grumbling into appreciation.  In the
 process, it will do a very good thing for the basic science, which
 cannot really get along playing so much to itself as it now
 (allegedly and probably actually) is.
 
 	That is just a rough first cut and deals with objectives more
 than with how to achieve them, but it seems best to propose
 something for discussion rather than just to ask you to ponder
 the situation.  Please let me have your reactions soon.
 
 				Regards
 
 				Lick
 
 -------