Until the last two or three years, three forces inhibited the acceptance of computer-assisted instruction (CAI). These were the fear on the part of traditional trainers of displacement by machines, the poor quality of existing courseware and limited capability of accompanying hardware, and the poor price and performance characteristics of existing hardware. More recently, however, several forces have begun to gather momentum and are now effecting a dramatic change in the technology of CAI. New CAI technologies that substantially reduce training time and travel costs, the development of more interesting and effective courseware, and the gradual acceptance of CAI as an effective method of instruction have all fostered the increased popularity of CAI instructional technologies. As the field of high-technology training matures, it is likely that the acceptance of computer-driven training methodologies will undergo an accelerated pace in all facets of business and industry. The forces contributing to this increased acceptance will stem from the continued popularity of educational games, from advances likely to emerge from work now being done in the area of artificial intelligence, and from the improved recordkeeping capability of stand-alone training systems that allow for immediate transfer of student records to a centralized mainframe database. (MN)