AI and Its New Winter: from Myths to Realities - Philosophy & Technology

AI has had several winters.Footnote 1 Among the most significant, there was one in the late 1970s, and another at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Today, we are talking about another predictable winter (Nield 2019; Walch 2019; Schuchmann 2019).Footnote 2 AI is subject to these hype cycles because it is a hope or fear that we have entertained since we were thrown out of paradise: something that does everything for us, instead of us, better than us, with all the dreamy advantages (we shall be on holiday forever) and the nightmarish risks (we are going to be enslaved) that this entails. For some people, speculating about all this is irresistible. It is the wild west of "what if" scenarios. But I hope the reader will forgive me for a "I told you so" moment.