During the 1980s, artificial intelligence research started to undergo a quiet, but important shift in focus from research in computer science to research in the human sciences and humanities. Though in the past, artificial intelligence has primarily been researched by computer scientists, the need for input from the human sciences has invited a great amount of cross-disciplinary work by members of many different callings. Rarely do people start out in the field of artificial intelligence; rather, the dream of building an intelligent machine infects them as they see the parallels between their work and the projects being undertaken in artificial intelligence. Because artificial intelligence is, in essence, studying the qualities of humanness, few disciplines can avoid somehow being tied in.