Inference Corporation[1][2] was an American software company that specialized in artificial intelligence systems.
The company's Automated Reasoning Tool (ART), initially implemented on a mainframe, subsequently made available on PCs, has been extended to ART-IM, an Information Management package; the product line originated in 1988.
[4][5] Ford and AOL are among the household-known corporations that use Inference software to enhance customer service.
[7] Prior to that, Inference acquired 1981-founded Computer Mathematics Corporation, marketer of SMP (computer algebra system);[8] Inference made another acquisition the year before they themselves were acquired by eGain.
[9] The Automated Reasoning Tool (ART) is a system designed by Paul Haley,[10] Chuck Williams, Brad Allen, and Mark Wright,[11] to design rule-based knowledge representations with options for frame and procedural methods of knowledge base representation.