AI's Sudden Boil
From 1960 to 1990 the cost of
computers used in AI and robotics research declined from the
equivalent of millions of dollars per computer in 1960 to a few
thousand dollars in 1990. The computer population increased greatly,
but the power available to individual AI programs remained an almost
constant 1 MIPS--less than insect power. Cost per machine stabilized
in 1990, and since then power has doubled yearly, to 1,000 MIPS in
2000. The major visible exception to this pattern is computer chess,
shown by a progression of knights, whose prestige lured major computer
companies into providing access to their most powerful machines, and
researchers into developing chess-specific hardware. (Special-purpose
chess machines are positioned at the minimum general-purpose computer
power that could emulate them. Similarly for the organisms at the
right: each marks the minimum power of a general-purpose computer that
could produce similarly complex behavior, as estimated by the text's
retina to robot vision criterion.)
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