There’s less and less about AI/ML on Hacker News: is AI winter coming?

4 points by albertTJames ↗ HN

5 comments

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There have been at least 50 stories about ML in just the past week.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...

I don't think anything going on on HN is evidence of any pending "AI Winter". Actually, my personal suspicion is that there aren't going to be any more "AI Winters" at all, at least none of the severity seen in the past. Maybe there will be an "AI Fall" at some point. But existing AI/ML techniques are already creating so much real world value that people aren't going to start dropping it like a hot potato like they did with Expert Systems or whatever.

The hype cycle is still growing. Google trends for:

1. "Aritifical Intelligence" https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

2. "Deep Learning" https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=D...

The hype is just lagging indicator of the underlying factors, like investments. It would be better if the AI fewer would inflate to sustainable level gradually, but it's not likely to happen. Even if AI/ML field is in good shape for long term, its still likely that investors overshoot in short term. Overshooting leads to period of underinvestment that hurts.

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Even with the current advances we have only just seen a glimpse of what can be optimized and improved using ml/ai.
It isn't just AI/ML. The same could be said for a few other topics here. The problem isn't that there's less, it's that there's more of everything else.