Is AI winter here?
Is AI winter here?
We just celebrate the coldest Thanksgiving in over a century1. Standing in the cold wind, I’m curious what kind of winter we are going to experience this year. Some of the articles I read in recent months emgerged and I don’t know why a shivering R2D2 in the snow showing up in my head.
That’s right, as the surge of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, more and more companies are having AI fever, especially after seeing the triumph over Lee Sedol by AlphaGo2, which break the myth that computers would not be able to beat humans in a long time3.
However, as the excitement of computers beating humans calm down a little, people see the slow down of breakthroughs in AI field. Some people4 started to fear that the AI winter is coming, especially after the progress of self-driving cars failed the expectations5.
As an AI enthusiast, I have other opinions.
I don’t think AI winter will be here soon.
Actually, I think it’s the AI spring now.
Why?
I will explain soon.
But I’m not going to list any data here. I just want to talk about my instinct and the thoughts come from my own experiences.
The life cycle of AI
Everything has a life cycle. It’s very easy to understand why living things have life cycles. As we all know that an egg can grow into a little chick, and then into an adult chicken, and then die. For non-living things, they have the same life cycle too. I you are at my age (middle 30th) you probably remember the Pager6, which was used a lot for communication before the modern cell phones take their place. It was born in the 1950th, and peaked in the 1980th and 1990th, and dying in recent year.
The same for AI, it has it’s own life cycle too.
If we are going to use the seasons to describe the life cycle of AI, I think
- AI Spring is like the blossom stage of AI: they bloom, they grow fast and they need a lot of care
- AI Summer is like the fruit growing stage of AI: they start to mature, they are less vulnerable, but they still need lot of supervision
- AI Fall is like the mature stage of AI: they are mature, they can be put out in the market for sell in lots of places and they taste good
- AI Winter is like the rotten or dyging stage of AI: they start to rot and people want to throw them way
The AI Spring
As I mentioned before, I think it should be the AI Spring in current stage. Alghough AI is not a new concept, its history can be dated back to the 1940th6. I consider the stage before the AlphaGo Vs. Lee Sedol match as the baby AI growing in its mother’s womb. When AlphaGo won, it demonstrated the born of AI. While everyone was cheering about that, the spring of AI emerged with the heated up atmosphere. After struggling in the dark and cold weather for a long time, AI welcomed its spring. We saw blossoms everywhere, we felt the warmth in the air. Smelling the fragrent of the AI blossoms, companies didn’t want to left behind. Everyone wanted to bring AI to their company. The topic of AI was heated up so much, it seemed like the summer of AI had come earlier. People brought out their bathing suits, dreaming of a hot day at the beach. They have all their hopes up to enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful scene at the beach. But the fact is that it’s just a heat wave in the spring, when they dress up in their bathing suits, the temperature drop a little and went back to the normal spring temperature. However, the drop of temperature doesn’t mean that the winter it’s here, it’s still spring, the flowers are still there. Some of them might transformed into fruits at some point. But a lot of them might die because of the temperature or because they didn’t have the ability to become fruits.
It should be close to the end of spring now,
- For some companies, the flowers are dead. They may or may not grow more.
- For some companies, the flowers are still blooming. Some may transform to fruits, others may die.
- For some companies, the fruits are just formed. They are need time to grow and mature. Some may grow well, some may fall earlier.
What’s the future?
I don’t want to predict the future that much since there are so many possibilities. But there’s one thing I know, AI will grow to it’s mature stage, and we will be able to benefit from it.
We are into a new era. There will be AI and so many good hopes in front of us.
Welcom Future!!!
Welcom AI!!!
Image reference:
https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4613/39871040914_c97eed3d74_b.jpg