 The field of AI , now more than a half a century old , finally achieved some of its oldest goals . It began to be used successfully throughout the technology industry , although somewhat behind the scenes . Some of the success was due to increasing computer power and some was achieved by focusing on specific isolated problems and pursuing them with the highest standards of scientific accountability . Still , the reputation of AI , in the business world at least , was less than pristine . Inside the field there was little agreement on the reasons for AI 's failure to fulfill the dream of human level intelligence that had captured the imagination of the world in the 1960s . Together , all these factors helped to fragment AI into competing <unk> focused on particular problems or approaches , sometimes even under new names that disguised the <unk> pedigree of " artificial intelligence " . AI was both more cautious and more successful than it had ever been . 
