> these days, few people want specialized computers for artificial intelligence, preferring powerful general-purpose machines like those made by Sun Microsystem

> these days, few people want specialized computers for artificial intelligence, preferring powerful general-purpose machines like those made by Sun Microsystems Inc., a fast-growing Silicon Valley company. This is a starking example of how tech cycles change over time. The period in which the article was written was during an AI Winter (in fact, the Fifth Generation program is listed as a notable example[1] in the Wikipedia entry for "AI Winter") and Sun Microsystems was still in its prime at the time (work on the yet to be released Java language had started just 12 months[2] before). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_fizzle_of_the_fifth_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_fizzle_of_the_fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)#Hi...