Many AI researchers find that they can get more funding and sell more software if they avoid the bad name of "artificial intelligence" and instead pretend their work has nothing to do with intelligence at all. This was especially true in the early 1990s, during the second "AI winter".
Patty Tascarella writes: "Some believe the word 'robotics' actually carries a stigma that hurts a company's chances at funding."[19]
Saving a place for humanity at the top of the chain of being
Michael Kearns suggests that "people subconsciously are trying to preserve for themselves some special role in the universe".[20] By discounting artificial intelligence people can continue to feel unique and special. Kearns argues that the change in perception known as the AI effect can be traced to the mystery being removed from the system. In being able to trace the cause of events implies that it's a form of automation rather than intelligence.
A related effect has been noted in the history of animal cognition and in consciousness studies, where every time a capacity formerly thought as uniquely human is discovered in animals, (e.g. the ability to make tools, or passing the mirror test), the overall importance of that capacity is deprecated.[citation needed]
Herbert A. Simon, when asked about the lack of AI's press coverage at the time, said, "What made AI different was that the very idea of it arouses a real fear and hostility in some human breasts. So you are getting very strong emotional reactions. But that's okay. We'll live with that."[21]
Mueller 1987 proposed comparing AI to human intelligence, coining the standard of Human-Level Machine Intelligence.[22] This nonetheless suffers from the AI effect however when different humans are used as the standard.[22]
Deep Blue defeats Kasparov
When IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Blue succeeded in defeating Garry Kasparov in 1997, people complained that it had only used "brute force methods" and it wasn't real intelligence.[10] Public perception of chess playing shifted from a difficult mental task to a routine operation.[23] Fred A. Reed writes:
"A problem that proponents of AI regularly face is this: When we know how a machine does something 'intelligent,' it ceases to be regarded as intelligent. If I beat the world's chess champion, I'd be regarded as highly bright."[24]
On the contrary, John McCarthy was disappointed by Deep Blue.[25] He argued that it was merely a brute force machine and did not have any deep understanding of the game.[25] However that is not to say that McCarthy generally dismissed AI.[25] He was one of the founders of the field and invented the term "artificial intelligence".[25] McCarthy lamented how widespread the AI effect is,
but merely did not feel that Deep Blue was a good example.[25]
Future
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Experts agree the AI effect certainly[27][28] – or probably[29] – will continue. Because technological development is a continual and unending process,[30] the AI effect will also continue without end.[27] Each advancement in AI will produce another objection and another redefinition of public expectations – ever expanding.[27] While not addressing the AI effect directly, some writers have speculated[30] the indefinite perpetuity of this phenomenon may be due to artificial intelligence itself,[30] as Moore's law is.[citation needed]
The AI effect may grow to include dismissal of all specialised artificial intelligences.[29] Instead the public perception of "artificial intelligence" may shift to only include those which are networks or collectives of multiple specialised AIs.[29]
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