My anecdote on the AI winter: I went for grad studies in ML (really, just to learn ANNs) in the early/mid 2000s and we had two tenured professors.
One taught all of the data mining/ML algorithms including SVMs, and was clearly on their way up.
The other was relegated to teaching a couple of ANN courses and was backwatered.
The agreement was that they wouldn’t overlap in topics. Yet the first professor would take subtle couldn’t help but to take one or two swipes at ANNs when discussing SVMs.
One taught all of the data mining/ML algorithms including SVMs, and was clearly on their way up.
The other was relegated to teaching a couple of ANN courses and was backwatered.
The agreement was that they wouldn’t overlap in topics. Yet the first professor would take subtle couldn’t help but to take one or two swipes at ANNs when discussing SVMs.