A brief history of AI: how to prevent another winter (a critical review)
Amirhosein Toosi, Andrea Bottino, Babak Saboury, Eliot Siegel, Arman Rahmim
The field of artificial intelligence (AI), regarded as one of the most
enigmatic areas of science, has witnessed exponential growth in the past decade
including a remarkably wide array of applications, having already impacted our
everyday lives. Advances in computing power and the design of sophisticated AI
algorithms have enabled computers to outperform humans in a variety of tasks,
especially in the areas of computer vision and speech recognition. Yet, AI's
path has never been smooth, having essentially fallen apart twice in its
lifetime ('winters' of AI), both after periods of popular success ('summers' of
AI). We provide a brief rundown of AI's evolution over the course of decades,
highlighting its crucial moments and major turning points from inception to the
present. In doing so, we attempt to learn, anticipate the future, and discuss
what steps may be taken to prevent another 'winter'.