TITLE:		THE PROSPECTS FOR BUILDING INTELLIGENT COMMUNICATION
		SYSTEMS
AUTHOR:		Patrick Demasco

ABSTRACT:
In this paper, I will discuss my Visions for the field of Augmentative
communication during the next decade. I will address the technological
perspective, and specifically focus on the prospects for applying
artificial intelligence to future generation systems. My views are
motivated by what I believe to be two major goals for the research and
development community:

Improvement of the quality of communication by current users;
Improvements to technology that will enable us to serve new
populations (e.g., cognitively impaired)

To discuss any vision for the future of a specific discipline or
topic, it is necessary to establish some set of assumptions about what
the rest of the world will be like. In the case of augmentative
communication, it would be appropriate to consider a 'Technological
Context'. Specifically, we want to ask the question: 'What technology
might be available for the AAC system user by the year 2000?'.