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What the Cold Taught Us

  1. 01What the Cold Taught Us
  2. 02What failure teaches
  3. 03The assumptions that broke
  4. 04The problem with logic
  5. 05Knowledge is not rules
  6. 06The quiet work
  7. 07Connectionism returns
  8. 08Why the winters mattered
  9. 09Reinforce your understanding
  10. 10Question: assumptions
  11. 11Question: connectionism
  12. 12Question: legacy
  13. 13Quiz: answer
  14. 14The thaw
  15. 15Want to go deeper?
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Module III

The Long Winter

Chapter III

What the Cold Taught Us

In this chapter

  • The assumptions that brokewhy logic and rules weren't enough
  • Knowledge is not ruleswhat the winters revealed about intelligence
  • The quiet workwhat researchers were doing during the cold years
  • Connectionism returnsthe idea that wouldn't stay buried
  • Why the winters matteredwhat failure taught the field

Failure is only wasted if nothing comes from it.

Two winters, across several decades, had dismantled two different visions of what AI was supposed to be.

Logic hadn't been enough. Rules hadn't been enough. The assumptions that had felt most solid had all turned out to be wrong: that intelligence was rational, that knowledge could be written down, that the right instructions would eventually produce understanding.

But clearing away a wrong idea is not nothing. It's often how the right question finally gets room to appear.

During the cold years, quieter work was happening. Researchers who had stepped away from rules and logic entirely, and were asking something different: what if machines didn't follow instructions at all? What if they learned?

The winters didn't kill AI. They killed a particular idea of what AI was. What came next was shaped by everything the cold had taught.

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