A clear sign that the AI Winter is approaching fast ... https://mastodon.social/@preya/115539102794649854
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@cstross Valve is the only privately held large gaming platform out there so they can afford not to mention it. No stockholders to cheer up with a quick share price boost. For the rest of us the bubble is still quite in effect… for now.
While I agree that the next AI Winter is likely just around the corner, I'm not sure Valve not talking about AI means much in that regards. Valve as a company has always been rather unexciteable. A bit like Nintendo, Valve seem perfectly at ease with just doing their own thing and ignoring whatever mechanical hare the rest of the industry is chasing after at the moment.
@skjeggtroll @cstross This is true, but on the other hand:
- Valve absolutely does take interest in "Next Big Things", e.g. they did their own experiments with AR back in the day, and there was even some minor drama when they gave up on those
- I haven't seen industry people be this excited about something Valve did since they launched Steam, which is a sign of its own
@skjeggtroll I'm using the term not only in the context of it's 1980s meaning but to refer to the investment bubble (investment in AI was notoriously slack during the first AI winter).
When the current bubble bursts, investment in anything with AI in the pitch is going to be as popular as herpes at a swingers' club.
It's difficult to divine, and in particular about the future, but I suspect the AI bubble popping might spell the end of cheap money for the tech industry in general and Silicon Valley in particular even _outside_ of AI.
For Academia, the Winter might be Nuclear when it comes to anything AI related. For the tech industry my guess is it'll be status quo ante bellum, where developers will just quetly use established AI techniques where they make sense -- like they have for 30 years.
@skjeggtroll Of course it will. It's the consequence of the taper-off of Moore's Law rippling through the consequential supply chain it propped up for 50 years, ie. semiconductor products reliably doubling in performance every 18 months. That's now slowed to a trickle and they're squeezing the last drops out of the toothpaste tube of optimistic investors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication#Feature_size
