I would like to take this opportunity to give my views on the success of the Japanese 
Fifth Generation Project. Rather than restrict my comments solely to the technologies 
developed, I would like to discuss the important contributions that the FGCS Project 
has made to Japanese industry and to the organization of research in Europe. 

To give you some background, I have been an Advisers to Government Ministers 
in a number of countries on the organization of industrial research programs such as 
the FGCS Project. I am currently an Adviser on industrial policy to the European 
Commission. And in addition, I am the Chairman for the British Conservative Party 
for the Thames Valley region; Britain's silicon valley. I also had the great fortune to 
be at the launch of ICOT, to see the foundation of the FGCS Project and to work at 
ICOT for a short period. 

The FGCS project has three major achievements: 

1. It has given a major boost to the state of the art of software technologies in 
   Japanese industry. 

2. It has changed the way that Information Technology research is conducted in 
   Europe and other countries. 

3. The FGCS Project plan provided a "Road Map" for future computer research 
   one that remains still relevant today. 

I will discuss these three achievements further 

My observation of the Japanese software industry in the early 1980s, when I at-
tended the conference that launched the FGCS Project, was that it was a long way 
behind the excellent Japanese hardware industry and was way behind the American and 
European software industries. With the launch of the FGCS Project, Japanese com-
panies immediately acknowledged the growing importance of software and especially 
of artificial intelligence techniques for robotics, image processing and knowledge-based 
systems. The launch therefore spurred Japanese companies to switch major resources 
to software. The result is that during the 1980s the Japanese software industry overtook 
the Europeans and made very significant progress in catching up with the Americans. 
In addition, throughout the pasted 10 years of its operation the FGCS Project through 


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