In the last decade, AI firmly settled into our industrial society with the expert systems as the representative product. However, almost every one of the systems could cover only a single task domain. In the highly mechanized world of the 21st century, systems will become smart and user friendly enough to cover a wide range of task domains. Systems with much user friendliness must be multilingual because users in different domains usually have different languages. Language is formed in its own culture. Therefore, promotion for cross-cultural scientific interchange will be indispensable for the progress of AI. This volume contains the 150 technical contributions selected for the first Pacific Rim international conference, as well as panel reports on Expert Systems in the 90s and statements on AI Research in 6 Pacific Rim countries. These include Japan, USA, Korea, Singapore, Thailand and China. The chapters of this work cover the most promising areas of AI research for the coming decade. Researchers in all areas of knowledge science and AI may find inspiration in this work.