Landmark events, major trends, and the future of AI research: history, promise, hype

In the present paper, we look at the trends in Artificial Intelligence research, as seen from academic publications indexed by the Google Scholar search engine. More specifically, we look at the number of publications including AI related keywords for every calendar year from 1960 to 2023. By plotting the number of publications and the annual growth rate for every year, we are able to identify major trends and landmark events in the history of AI research and development. We discuss them in detail in this paper, along with extrapolation into the future. We also highlight the repeated historical tendency of human society to overestimate the imminent capabilities of AI systems in the ‘very near future’.