In the late 1980s, IBM had KT (Knowledge tool), ESE (Expert
System Environment) if I remember the name correctly, and in the
1990s there was IBM Prolog (for VM) and IBM Prolog for 370, which
ran under MVS/XA and ESA and VM. Then there was The Integrated
Reasoning Shell (TIRS) that was running under XA and ESA, and
possibly under OS/2.
I was told that IBM sold off TIRS, and then killed Prolog around
2000(?).
I know positively that ESE was being used in Germany, by GAD (an
abbreviation for a very long German company name -- and I have
forgotten the full name) in determining credit worthiness -- I
think they were a service provider to banks.
I know all the above because I had been involved in doing the sub
system interfaces for Prolog and TIRS so they could work with
CICS, IMS, TSO, etc. And I got involved in ESE when it was
getting PIC4s... It became a SEV1 critsit and I figured it out
just before I was to get on a plane and go to Germany. And there
is an SMF record, I no longer remember the number, that I
authored to allow for cross-mem charge back from Prolog and TIRS.
IBM decided to go a different route. So it got orphaned. I
actually had to contact people in IBM to get it named
correctly... Thanks to Cheryl Watson and a discussion we had
about it.
What I am getting at is AI in what we might think of as an
elementary state has been around for quite a while and the AI we
see today is, to me, an explosion of AI capability and usage.
Please note something I was told at Deloitte -- when using an AI
system, beware of biases. I find them all the time in the LLMs
being used online when I am doing research.
Automated operations was arguably an AI system, rudimentary, but
one just the same when I compare to KT and ESE.
Oh, and I was just a contractor at IBM STL (now SVL) in the early
1990s.
Steve Thompson
On 6/22/2026 12:53 PM, Scott Guynes wrote:
Is anyone using AI on the mainframe? If so, what are you using and what are
some examples of things you're using it for?
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