I am old enough to remember three A.I. booms and two intervening "winters". The first boom was picking all the low hanging fruit like playing checkers, moving blocks, solving word problems. The power of computers in the 60s and 70s was pitiful. Then the easy stuff was done for while.
The second boom was expert systems and logic super computers. Those systems never worked that well and A.I. went into long sleep.
Now its supercomputer data mining and greatly improved neural networks.
I don't think there's going to be a winter this time. The current boom may only take us so far, but there are a couple more booms on the horizon that in all likelihood will be cusping well before this one is finished.
The second boom was expert systems and logic super computers. Those systems never worked that well and A.I. went into long sleep.
Now its supercomputer data mining and greatly improved neural networks.