A leaflet for SHARP’s WD-series word processors - WD-540, WD-541 and WD-545, priced at ¥165,000. The front side demonstrates the creation of the OCEAN CLUB logo featuring a swordfish, showcasing the built-in graphics editor. The reverse side contains detailed technical specifications for all three models and the tagline: “10 years of achievement - the first professional-grade personal word processor with an AI dictionary.” Print date: November 1987.

AI was a big buzzword in the 1970-1980s. Especially in Japan.

Back then the most promising approach was not neural networks like now but symbolic computations.

Then it all collapsed with the "AI winter". Government funding went away, venture investors disappeared too, the oh-so-promising startups went bankrupt. The very word "AI" started being shunned because it became associated with vaporware and bad investments. Even as late as the 2010s people used terms like "machine learning" and "computer vision/imaging" for the areas that were called "AI" before the "winter" (and are called "AI" now, again) - the joke was "if it works, it's ML, if it doesn't, it's AI" (source: I was in grad school working on computer vision in late 2000s)

We'll see if the current AI boom ends up in a new "AI winter" as well.

elder_george, computer vision researcher