Early AI researchers including economist Herbert Simon predicted that "machines, will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do." Naturally, that was far from becoming a reality and the extra optimism and a lack of understanding led funding to dry up and an "
AI winter" set in.
Most important, perhaps, is that the
AI winter has indeed ended, which may be the largest hurdle that nanotechnology needed to overcome to achieve its promise.
Public interest dried up when the robot army failed to materialize by the early 1980s, a period that researchers refer to as the "
AI winter." But research, though seemingly dormant, continued.
(2) That led to a pessimism about the exaggerated promises of AI and a significant decrease in research funding, ushering in the
AI winter of the 1970s.
The field was born with the AI Spring of 1956, when key developments made machine intelligence seem just around the corner, and enjoyed a long season of optimism until the harsh
AI Winter of 1974.
This was an opportune time to be at DARPA, because it was during the "
AI winter," and I was able to help start some opportunities in both DARPA and the wider government and thus could be a contributor to a new growth in funding and, in my own small way, help influence the thaw in that winter and a growth in opportunities leading to the incredible period of productivity that AI is now in.
The report supports declines in government funding during the "
AI winter" of the 1970s and '80s.
At that time, AI was in the middle of the "
AI Winter", and seventeen years back, the web was just beginning to permeate computing.
The Mid-1970s to the Early 1980s:
AI Winter, Springtime for HCI
The so-called
AI winter was dominated by people who lost money in companies.