
Bust: the second AI winter 1987–1993 The business community's fascination with AI rose and fell in the 1980s in the classic pattern of an economic bubble. The collapse was in the perception of AI by government agencies and investors – the field continued to make advances despite the criticism. Rodney Brooks and Hans Moravec, researchers from the related field of robotics, argued for an entirely new approach to artificial intelligence. A New and Different AI pinter The term "AI winter" was coined by researchers who had survived the funding cuts of 1974 when they became concerned that enthusiasm for expert systems had spiraled out of control and that disappointment would certainly follow. Their fears were well founded: in the late 1980s and early 1990s, AI suffered a series of financial setbacks. The first indication of a change in weather was the sudden collapse of the market for specialized AI hardware in 1987. Desktop computers from Apple and IBM had been steadily gai...