Tea at Trianon: The Risk of a New AI Winter

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 18, 2023

The Risk of a New AI Winter

From Medium:

They’re part of the boom-bust cycle that we’ve seen in AI history. During an AI boom, computer scientists and firms invent new techniques that seem exciting and powerful. Tech firms use them to build products that promise to make everyone’s lives easier (or more productive) and investors unleash a geyser of funding. Everyone — including starry-eyed journalists — begins overpromising, gushing about the artificial smarts that will be invented. Humanlike! Godlike! Omniscient!
That level of hype can’t be maintained, though — and at some point the industry starts underdelivering. The AI turns out to be surprisingly fail-ridden. Companies and people that try using it to solve everyday problems discover it’s prone to errors, often quite mundane ones.
Then an “AI winter” begins. Customers stop paying top dollar for AI products; investors close their purses. Journalists begin more critically appraising the landscape. And because everyone feels burned (or embarrassed), things slide into an overly negative cycle: Even the computer scientists and inventors with legitimately interesting new paths for AI can’t easily get funding to pursue them. This lasts for years. (Read more.)