The Lighthill Report

In 1973, the British government asked the mathematician Sir James Lighthill to assess the state of AI research. His report was deeply critical.

Lighthill concluded that AI had not made meaningful progress toward general intelligence and that the field’s most ambitious hopes were unjustified. The problems researchers were tackling were either too easy to matter or too hard to solve. The useful middle ground they had hoped for — the manageable problems that would lead naturally to harder ones — was mostly missing.

The report helped trigger a sharp cut in UK AI funding. Other agencies soon became more cautious as well.

The first winter had arrived.