The Second AI Winter Begins

Cultural MomentsSecond AI Winter
Impact

What Happened

The expert systems bubble burst. LISP machine companies collapsed. The DARPA Strategic Computing Initiative was cut. Japan's Fifth Generation project was failing. Expert systems proved brittle, expensive to maintain, and unable to learn. The AI industry lost billions.

Why It Mattered

Another devastating crash for AI. Researchers avoided the term 'AI' entirely, rebranding their work as 'machine learning,' 'computational intelligence,' or 'knowledge systems.' The stigma lasted over a decade.

Tags

Part of the Second AI Winter (1988–1993) era · Browse all cultural moments · View all 1988 milestones

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