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In 1985, I moved east to join AT&T Bell Laboratories and build an AI research group. Over the following years, that group -- the AI Principles Research Department -- grew substantially, and eventually became two departments, the second one focusing on machine learning, information retrieval, and natural language processing. Amongst our more well-known work in knowledge representation at AT&T was the CLASSIC system, a well-founded description logic system with limited representational power in order to support tractable reasoning. With CLASSIC, we implemented the PROSE product configuration system, which was deployed and used in AT&T and later, Lucent Technologies. There were some 15 different PROSE configuration products built, and overall PROSE systems processed more than $5 billion worth of equipment orders. Our AI team at AT&T became one of the stronger groups in the world over the almost two decades of its existence, having counted in its ranks at various times a substantial number of truly outstanding researchers, among whom were David Etherington, Bart Selman, Henry Kautz, Fernando Pereira, Michael Kearns, Rob Schapire, Julia Hirschberg, David McAllester, Rich Sutton, Peter Stone, William Cohen, Michael Littman, Yoram Singer, Yoav Freund, Peter Patel-Schneider, Deborah McGuinness, Charles Isbell, Steve Abney, Michael Collins, Amit Singhal, David Lewis, and many others.
In 1994, I was promoted to become the Director of the lab we were in (Software and Systems Research). In 1996, as AT&T was spinning off Lucent Technologies, I was part of the original senior management of AT&T Labs, and helped form AT&T Labs-Research, at that time led by A. G. "Sandy" Fraser. At that time, my lab became the Information Systems and Services Research laboratory, and besides AI (led by Fernando Pereira and Henry Kautz, and subsequently, Michael Kearns), we had strong teams in HCI (led by Julia Hirschberg and later, Candy Kamm), Secure Systems (led by Dave Maher and then Bill Aiello), IP communications services (led by Larry Jackel), Online platforms and innovative Web services, including secure digital music distribution (led by Gregg Vesonder) and Customer Decision Modeling (led by John Rotondo). We created innovative services ranging from audio-enhanced instant messaging to Universal Message Access (eventually serving almost 3 million customers) to collaborative listening to music. In 2001, we changed the name of our lab to Communications Services Research to reflect our focus on unified communications and related services.
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