NYT "AI" explainer misleads. Deep learning techniques date from the 1980s, & "AI" had been hot/cold for decades, not slow until 2012. There was no new "single idea" in 2012. What WAS new, & propelled the AI boom, was concentrated resources (data/compute) controlled by tech cos.

@Mer__edith So I guess nobody associated with this piece had ever seen T2: Judgment Day? Because in that, there's a bit where the T-800 says "My brain is a neural net processor. I can learn."

21 years before 2012.

It's like they didn't do even rudimentary fact-checking.

@kagan So many computing historians on the job market at this very minute. And yet!

@Mer__edith @kagan Came here to mention T2. Nobody watches the classics any more. 😢

And while computing historians are great, taking 30 seconds to Google "neural network history" would be a good start. 😡