According to Wikipedia, citations omitted:In the history of artificial intelligence, an AI winter is a period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research. The term was coined by analogy to the idea of a nuclear winter. The field has experienced several hype cycles, followed by disappointment and criticism, followed by funding cuts, followed by renewed interest years or decades later.The wikipedia page discusses a bit about the causes of AI Winters. I'm curious however whether it is possible to stop an AI Winter from occurring. I don't really like the misallocation of resources that are caused by over-investment followed by under-investment.One of the causes of the AI Winter listed on that Wikipedia page is hype:The AI winters can be partly understood as a sequence of over-inflated expectations and subsequent crash seen in stock-markets and exemplified by the railway mania and dotcom bubble. In a common pattern in development of new technology (known as hype cycle), an event, typically a technological breakthrough, creates publicity which feeds on itself to create a peak of inflated expectations followed by a trough of disillusionment. Since scientific and technological progress can't keep pace with the publicity-fueled increase in expectations among investors and other stakeholders, a crash must follow. AI technology seems to be no exception to this rule.And it seems that this paragraph indicates that any new technology will be stuck in this pattern of inflated expectations followed by disillusionment. So are AI Winters inevitable? That AI technologies will always be overhyped in the future and that severe corrections will always will always occur? Or can there a way to manage this Hype Cycle to stop severe increases/decreases in funding?
Are AI Winters inevitable?
history;ai winter
I think that by strict definition of the word inevitable, no, future AI Winter events are not inevitable. However likely or unlikely it may be, it is possible to control research spending and to create a more stable plan of funding research in Artificial Intelligence. Because it is possible to avoid an AI Winter event, an event is not inevitable.