Since 1956, when John McCarthy convinced attendees of the Dartmouth Conference to adopt the term “Artificial Intelligence”, research funding and enthusiasm over the subject has had peaks and troughs.

In particular, in the late 70s and 80s, there were two AI winters, with significantly reduced funding for research into AI(see this great article for an illustrated timeline of AI).

We now see AI in every part of our lives, from movie recommendations on our favourite streaming service to facial recognition at airport passport control. However, despite this, research by PwC has shown that only 4% of executives plan to deploy AI in 2020, compared to 20% in 2019.

And the reason for this is not surprising. Seven out of ten companies report “minimal or no impact from AI so far”, according to a survey of 2,500 executives, conducted as part of a report by BCG and MIT.

#industry #data-science #artificial-intelligence #business #machine-learning