According to the article, before that, one professor's report lead to a near extinction level AI winter in the U.K. for a decade, which also effected Continental research funding. So more than one major winter.
As someone who rode part of the Lisp Machine wave in the early 1980s, I must say the all the "machine learning" ... ferment seems to be too weak a word, that I read about on HN nowadays is heartening.
