Resolution Criteria:

By "functionally dead" I mean that, e.g., the lab no longer exists and was shut down due to lack of funding, that it was acquired and sold for parts, or that it technically exists but is a shell of its former self. For example, I would call Bell Labs "functionally dead" today compared to how important it was in the past. In the case of DeepMind (which is owned by Google), "functionally dead" would mean that the company (if viewed as an independent organization) was basically dead. For example, if Google shut down DeepMind and moved all the employees to other projects, this would count. But if Google desides to just be Google and re-brand DeepMind as "GooglebardGemini AI Research 2.0 Plus", this would not count. The situation is somewhat cleaner for OpenAI and Anthropic: they're dead if they dissolve, stop research entirely and just support their existing models, etc. In the case of partial acquisition, I'll count the company as "dead" if the majority of the research talent has left.

Motivation and Context:

There are two reasons AI labs might die. One is that this whole AI thing was just hype, and they can't support themselves. Or, maybe the whole AI thing works out, but only one company gets there, with the others unable to compete. So: will one of these companies go away?

Question copied from: https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2024/forecasting-ai-future.html