3 ms·

By 1980's and 1990's, are you referring to the Japanese 5th Generation project?

• p_l 6y ago
  No, there was general failure of AI due to overhype in 1980s, hitting hard in early 1990s, with some marking a big chunk of the hype starting after (non-hype) papers about Digital's XCON paper. Some of it was due to non-delivery of hyped predictions, some of it was due to sudden disappearance of military funding that helped spread the hype. The 5th generation project was part of the hype, but at least in the west, lesser part of the winter. The original AI Winter was, iirc, related to UK report in 1960s/1970s. The second AI winter killed a lot of advancement in computing in general, combined with new waves of programmers coming from very limited environments who were never exposed to more advanced, capable techniques - by the time they got to play with them, AI winter was in full swing and they were pushed out as "toys". While expert systems in naive form were definitely not the answer to many generic problems, they are often part of the answer, and the amount of time I hit cases of "this could be done as rule system and be clearer", or even "Why can't I depend on features of 1980s XCON in 2020??? It would have saved me so much money!" is simply depressing. (n.b. I suspect a significant portion of why many modern shops don't even look toward features like XCON - which ensured correct configuration in computer orders - is because the norm became that customer pays for anything like missing necessary pieces)
  • vram22 6y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for the detailed answer.