Watch out: The AI bulls are running again - The Boston Globe

This spring, IBM opened a new center in Cambridge for its "cognitive intelligence" software, also known as Watson. Watson is ready to analyze vast quantities of data and spit out deep insights. All that intelligence, according to an IBM release from September, represents nothing less than "a new era in computing." Thirty years earlier, IBM was setting up another office a few blocks away to focus on the then-trendy realm of artificial intelligence. In the summer of 1986, IBM executive Herbert Schorr told an AI conference, "We look at artificial intelligence as an extremely timely technology that is ready for commercial applications."