First of all, great post, thanks for exploring this topic!
So I’m a little confused about the definition here:
AI winter is operationalised as a drawdown in annual global AI investment of ≥50%
I would guess that the burst of the dot-com bubble meets this definition? But I wouldn’t exactly call 2002-2010 an “internet winter”: useage kept growing and growing, just with a better understanding of what you can and can’t profit from. I think theres a good chance (>30%) of this particular definition of “AI winter” occurring, but I also reckon if it happens, people will feel like it’s unfair to characterize it as such.
I think a more likely outcome is a kind of “AI autumn”: Investment keeps coming at a steady rate, and lots and lots of people are using AI for the things it’s good at, but the number of advancements slows significantly, and certain problems prove intractable, and the hype dies down. I think we’ve already seen this process happen for Autonomous Vehicles. I think this scenario is very likely.
I would put a huge reduction in investment as way higher than 30% - investment cycles boom and bust as does the economy. Even a global recession or similar could massively reduce AI expenditure while AI development continued marching on at a similar or only slightly reduced rate.
On the other hand the current crypto winter does match the OPs definition, with practical use of crypto reducing along with investment reducing.
In general though I agree with you that looking at investment figures isn’t a robust way to define a “winter”.
Thanks, that’s a good observation—you’re right that this is a permissive operationalisation. I actually deliberately did that to be more “charitable” to Eden—to say, “AI winter seems pretty unlikely even on these pretty conservative assumptions”, but I should probably have flagged that more clearly. I agree that there are some scenarios where a 50% drawdown happens but there’s no real winter worthy of the name.
Another way of putting this is, I thought I’d get pushback along the lines of “this is way too bullish on AI progress” (and I did get some of that, but not a lot), and instead got lots of pushback in the form of “this is way too bullish on AI winter”. (Not talking about the EA forum here, but other places.)
I think a more likely outcome is a kind of “AI autumn”: Investment keeps coming at a steady rate, and lots and lots of people are using AI for the things it’s good at, but the number of advancements slows significantly, and certain problems prove intractable, and the hype dies down. I think we’ve already seen this process happen for Autonomous Vehicles. I think this scenario is very likely.
Agree that this is a live possibility. (But I also don’t think there’s been a 50% drawdown in autonomous driving investment, so I don’t think my operationalisation fails there.)
First of all, great post, thanks for exploring this topic!
So I’m a little confused about the definition here:
I would guess that the burst of the dot-com bubble meets this definition? But I wouldn’t exactly call 2002-2010 an “internet winter”: useage kept growing and growing, just with a better understanding of what you can and can’t profit from. I think theres a good chance (>30%) of this particular definition of “AI winter” occurring, but I also reckon if it happens, people will feel like it’s unfair to characterize it as such.
I think a more likely outcome is a kind of “AI autumn”: Investment keeps coming at a steady rate, and lots and lots of people are using AI for the things it’s good at, but the number of advancements slows significantly, and certain problems prove intractable, and the hype dies down. I think we’ve already seen this process happen for Autonomous Vehicles. I think this scenario is very likely.
I would put a huge reduction in investment as way higher than 30% - investment cycles boom and bust as does the economy. Even a global recession or similar could massively reduce AI expenditure while AI development continued marching on at a similar or only slightly reduced rate.
On the other hand the current crypto winter does match the OPs definition, with practical use of crypto reducing along with investment reducing.
In general though I agree with you that looking at investment figures isn’t a robust way to define a “winter”.
Thanks, that’s a good observation—you’re right that this is a permissive operationalisation. I actually deliberately did that to be more “charitable” to Eden—to say, “AI winter seems pretty unlikely even on these pretty conservative assumptions”, but I should probably have flagged that more clearly. I agree that there are some scenarios where a 50% drawdown happens but there’s no real winter worthy of the name.
Another way of putting this is, I thought I’d get pushback along the lines of “this is way too bullish on AI progress” (and I did get some of that, but not a lot), and instead got lots of pushback in the form of “this is way too bullish on AI winter”. (Not talking about the EA forum here, but other places.)
Agree that this is a live possibility. (But I also don’t think there’s been a 50% drawdown in autonomous driving investment, so I don’t think my operationalisation fails there.)