Elon Musk and Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak have recently signed a letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of AI systems. The goal is to give society time to adapt to what the signatories describe as an "AI summer", which they believe will ultimately benefit humanity, as long as the right guardrails are put in place. These guardrails include rigorously audited safety protocols. It is a laudable goal, but there is an even better way to spend these six months: retiring the hackneyed label of "artificial intelligence" from public debate. The term belongs to the same scrapheap of history that includes "iron curtain", "domino theory" and "Sputnik moment".

The relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and defence is a longstanding one. The first "AI winter" of the 1970s, when interest in the subject evaporated and research work all but ceased, was due to Anglosphere government and defence bodies pulling the plug on funding. It's still widely believed that telephone conversations intercepted by Five Eyes intelligance agencies under the secret Echelon initiative are scanned in bulk for keywords of interest, allowing conversations of significance to be picked out from among millions of innocuous ones: but in fact, the problem of speech recognition, one of the main applications foreseen for AI, has yet to be completely solved even today. Back in the '70s a lack of tangible results led to an exhaustion of goodwill towards AI. It's common knowledge that military and intelligence interest can propel new technologies forward, and for a long while AI was without that safety net. But the story couldn't be more different today.

The dream of building a machine that can think like a human stretches back to the origins of electronic computers. But ever since research into artificial intelligence (AI) began in earnest after World War II, the field has gone through a series of boom and bust cycles called "AI summers" and "AI winters." Each cycle begins with optimistic claims that a fully, generally intelligent machine is just a decade or so away. Funding pours in and progress seems swift. Over the last ten years, we've clearly been in an AI summer as vast improvements in computing power and new techniques like deep learning have led to remarkable advances.

The last decade was a big one for artificial intelligence but researchers in the field believe that the industry is about to enter a new phase. Hype surrounding AI has peaked and troughed over the years as the abilities of the technology get overestimated and then re-evaluated. The peaks are known as AI summers, and the troughs AI winters. The 10s were arguably the hottest AI summer on record with tech giants repeatedly touting AI's abilities. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, sometimes called one of the "godfathers of AI", told the BBC that AI's abilities were somewhat overhyped in the 10s by certain companies with an interest in doing so.

As we look back, we observe that the last decade has been a great phase for AI and its researchers. This was the time where we saw AI in a more dynamic and evolutionary role, be it in professional or personal lives. However, in a report by BBC, it has been noted that "hype surrounding AI has peaked and troughed over the years as the abilities of the technology get overestimated and then re-evaluated. Where the peaks are known as AI summers, the troughs are termed as AI winter." According to the report, the 10s were arguably the hottest AI summer on record with tech giants repeatedly touting AI's abilities.

The last decade was a big one for artificial intelligence but researchers in the field believe that the industry is about to enter a new phase. Hype surrounding AI has peaked and troughed over the years as the abilities of the technology get overestimated and then re-evaluated. The peaks are known as AI summers, and the troughs AI winters. The 10s were arguably the hottest AI summer on record with tech giants repeatedly touting AI's abilities. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, sometimes called one of the "godfathers of AI", told the BBC that AI's abilities were somewhat overhyped in the 10s by certain companies with an interest in doing so.

One of the most popular shows is Game of Thrones. Ever since the first season characters have been warning that Winter is coming. Around this time of year as the leaves change colors, we know that Winter is coming. What about in the technology world is AI Winter coming? Since the 1950's we have had periods of AI Summers and AI Winters.