This chapter examines some of the ways artificial intelligence (AI) strategies, with particular emphasis on expert systems (ES), have been and can be used to facilitate online social science research. The size and rate of growth of the Internet makes it particularly important to automate analysis. We discuss how research can be automated using artificial intelligence and expert systems approaches including a variety of AI strategies, such as intelligent agents, multi-agent systems, expert systems, semantic networks, natural language understanding, genetic algorithms, neural networks, machine learning, and data mining. We conclude by considering some of the implications of this approach for the future of social research.