This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Marvin Minsky and Roger Schank warned of a second AI winter in 1984

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Marvin Minsky and Roger Schank warned of a second AI winter at a meeting of the American Assocation of Artificial Intelligence in 1984. Their prediction would come true 3 years later.

Marvin Minksy was an important pioneer in the field of AI. He penned the research proposal for the Dartmouth Conference, which coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”, and he was a participant in it when it was hosted the next summer. Minsky would also co-founded the MIT AI labs, which went through different names, and the MIT Media Laboratory. In terms of popular culture, he was an adviser to Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He won the Turing Award for his influence on AI in 1969.

Roger Schank is an American psychologist and Artificial Intelligence scientist. He studied mathematics as an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon, before receiving a PhD at University of Texas (Austin) in linguistics. He went on to work at Stanford and Yale, before becoming a professor of computer science and psychology at Yale. He also received a $30 million grant to set up the Institute for the Learning Sciences at University of Chicago in 1989. Schank is known for pioneering conceptual dependency theory, a model used in AI systems, and case-based reasoning.

This warning is an event for the HAI as it showcases the build-up to a second AI winter, and the aftermath of the first one. It is also significant in that it features some of the pioneers in artificial intelligence.