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The ~1990 AI Winter came about because DARPA money dried up after the (pyrric?) failure of the Japanese 5th Generation Project and the end of the Cold War. Aft

The ~1990 AI Winter came about because DARPA money dried up after the (pyrric?) failure of the Japanese 5th Generation Project and the end of the Cold War. After those things not enough people could afford $xx+K LISP Machines anymore ;) As long as there's a continual source of money there won't be another one - so basically as long as companies like Google and Facebook are profitable, and preferably money to be made elsewhere, things should be good.

Animats 10y ago
No, the AI Winter came because expert systems did not do much. I did a Masters at Stanford CS in 1985, and met most of the big names of that era. Stanford CS was dominated by the expert systems crowd, headed by Feigenbaum, and the logicians, headed by McCarthy. AI was being taught almost as philosophy. (Exam question: "Does a rock have intention?") You could graduate without ever seeing an expert system run, let alone writing one. Very little actually worked. But the faculty was claiming Strong AI Real Soon Now. From expert systems, which are just rules you write and feed to a simple inference engine. You get out pretty much what you put in. It's just another way to program. Feigenbaum was running around, testifying before Congress that the US would become an agrarian nation unless Congress funded a big national AI lab headed by him. Really. There were a number of AI startups, all of which failed. There was a fad for buying Symbolics 3600 LISP machines, a single user refrigerator sized box with a custom CPU. None of this delivered. That's why there was an AI winter.
- lispm 10y ago
  In 1985 much of the money going into Symbolics came from DARPA funding - direct or indirect. Strategic Defense Initiative, Strategic Computing, etc. Up to then almost all machines were sold into government projects. That was a peak year for Symbolics. In 1986 a Symbolics 3620 was about the size of a large tower PC. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/brochures/3620_1986.pdf http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/brochures/3...

Animats 10y ago

No, the AI Winter came because expert systems did not do much. I did a Masters at Stanford CS in 1985, and met most of the big names of that era. Stanford CS was dominated by the expert systems crowd, headed by Feigenbaum, and the logicians, headed by McCarthy. AI was being taught almost as philosophy. (Exam question: "Does a rock have intention?") You could graduate without ever seeing an expert system run, let alone writing one. Very little actually worked. But the faculty was claiming Strong AI Real Soon Now. From expert systems, which are just rules you write and feed to a simple inference engine. You get out pretty much what you put in. It's just another way to program. Feigenbaum was running around, testifying before Congress that the US would become an agrarian nation unless Congress funded a big national AI lab headed by him. Really. There were a number of AI startups, all of which failed. There was a fad for buying Symbolics 3600 LISP machines, a single user refrigerator sized box with a custom CPU. None of this delivered. That's why there was an AI winter.

lispm 10y ago
In 1985 much of the money going into Symbolics came from DARPA funding - direct or indirect. Strategic Defense Initiative, Strategic Computing, etc. Up to then almost all machines were sold into government projects. That was a peak year for Symbolics. In 1986 a Symbolics 3620 was about the size of a large tower PC. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/brochures/3620_1986.pdf http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/brochures/3...