We’ve been here before. In 1974, some AI researchers promised that machines would match human intelligence within a generation. They didn’t. That first promise created what’s now called the “AI winter”—a decade of failed expectations, cancelled projects, and lost funding.
It happened again in the 1980s with expert systems. Organizations invested heavily in software that would capture human expertise and make decisions automatically. Then they discovered these systems were expensive to maintain, brittle, and couldn’t adapt to new situations. Another winter followed.
Today, the AI hype cycle is running again. The question isn’t whether AI is real; it is. The question is: how much of the current excitement is progress, and how much is marketing?
