[webmaven]

Careful, that's the sort of thinking that led to the last 'AI Winter': assuming that if enough rule-based expert systems were built, general-purpose systems could be assembled from them and/or enough could be learned to build general-purpose systems.

Now, it is worth noting that DL models are already being assembled together (often with a coordinating DL model to switch between them). This can have the advantage of the smaller models being reusable to some extent (certainly more than expert systems ever were) but is not a panacea. The results are still essentially bespoke models rather than general purpose ones.

Deep Learning obviously has a lot more mileage left in it, given that much human mental labor is 'just' training and using our general-purpose intellects for what amount to a series of rather narrowly defined tasks, but it won't surprise me if there is a wall of some sort lurking just over the horizon that will require a different approach (albeit one that may still be called 'deep learning') to cross.

OTOH, it does seem as though the folks at DeepMind are fairly aggressively pursuing whatever is on the other side of that particular horizon:

https://deepmind.com/blog/neural-approach-relational-reasoni...

https://deepmind.com/blog/cognitive-psychology/

https://deepmind.com/blog/imagine-creating-new-visual-concep...

[eanzenberg]

We can debate, but I don't think another AI winter will happen again in my lifetime. AI work is just earning way too much money for its funding to get cut, and a lot of funding is currently private too.

[webmaven]

I wasn't arguing for another AI Winter per-se. My warning was more along the lines of pointing out a potential personal "career winter".

[sjg007]

I'd be surprised to see inductive learning anytime soon. But I definitely see the next generation of AI systems, robots and their implementation across industry. But that will rapidly fill out and then we will still be left with self determination.