Why did AI freeze over twice? — Two AI winters
Winter didn't come because AI was bad — it came because the promises got ahead of the skills.
1 · Think first
In 1969, while yesterday's perceptron was riding high, Minsky and Papert proved with math that there are problems a single layer of neurons can't solve. Funding and people drained away — that was the first winter.
In the 1980s, expert systems — where people wrote out every rule by hand — were all the rage. But step even a little outside the situations they'd been given, and they got it wrong. In 1987, the market for their special computers collapsed completely — the second winter.
Both times the reason was the same. AI didn't suddenly get dumb — the promises had gotten ahead of the skills.
2 · Experiment · Put it in order
Try it — put the winters in order
You know that game with an amazing trailer that turned out kind of meh once you played it? Then everyone bails. That's exactly what an AI winter is. Put the three stories in order.
Tap the pieces below in the order you think is right.
Figure
In one picture
Hopes shot up twice, and crashed both times. The gray bands are the winters.
3 · Quiz
Quick check
Three questions. Pick an answer and it's marked right away, with the reason why.
Today in one line
Today in one line
Winter didn't come because AI was bad —
it came because the promises got ahead of the skills.
Learn more
- The book that nailed down that a one-layer perceptron can't solve problems like XOR. It set off the first winter — Minsky, Papert, Perceptrons (1969)
- The paper that spread the word that you can still fix the weights when you stack many layers. It started thawing the winter. Nature 323(6088) 533–536 — Learning representations by back-propagating errors (1986)