Intelligent Machines (Video) IM 854: Welcome to the Pitt - AI: A Brand or a Breakthrough?
Jan 22, 2026
Thomas Haigh, historian of computing and author on AI history, gives a compact tour of AI's branding and evolution. He challenges the AI winter myth. He traces neural nets, symbolic AI, expert systems, and how machine learning reclaimed the AI label. He also weighs big tech centralization, compute-driven revivals, and possible brand fatigue ahead.
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AI Was Born As A Brand
- The term "artificial intelligence" was coined by John McCarthy in 1955 to market a summer research program at Dartmouth.
- Thomas Haigh argues AI has always functioned as a brand that shaped what counts as AI over decades.
AI Label Moved Technologies Around
- The AI label has shifted technologies over time, moving neural nets out then back in under different names.
- Haigh shows AI's instability: neural nets became pattern recognition, machine learning, then deep learning before reclaiming the AI brand.
'AI Winter' Myth Revisited
- The conventional story of multiple AI winters is misleading, Haigh contends there's effectively one broad winter.
- He finds the 1970s decline was localized to elite labs while global AI activity actually grew.
