Big dreams behind Xiaoice

It was at Carnegie Mellon where Dr. Hon began seriously building the foundation for his later work in machine-human interaction. His PhD supervisor, Turing Award winner Raj Reddy, was a former student of John McCarthy, the computer scientist who coined the term'artificial intelligence' in 1956 and is widely known as the father of AI. This connection would have richly benefited Dr. Hon, except that an'AI Winter' was happening from 1986 to 1992 when he was completing his doctorate degree. Recalling the climate of this period, "government agencies, universities and even companies slowed down or stopped funding to the field. It was only until the first decade of the 2000's that AI got so hot," said Dr. Hon. Dr. Hon credits the power of improved hardware and software and Big Data for heating up the AI scene.