Ask HN: Is this the winter of non-ai research?

I'm a mid-career, professional scientist (about a decade out from grad school). I've worked at several top industrial research labs and all of them are shadows of their former selves. Friends are heading for the hills ... as professors in some cases (though I'm shocked how everyone seems to only want to hire applied machine learning people at this point .. talk about Universities being trendy!) and in many cases, have just decided to get a regular software job (be it at the staff engineer level or as an architect).

As a scientist, I'm driven by curiosity. I am not the best out there but certainly not the worst. That said, I think there is something to be said for taking on unnecessary (career) risk for no clear gain (e.g. professors and academic types don't get paid MLB salaries .. unless you do Machine Learning these days).

So ... is this just winter for non-ai research? Should I just throw in the towel on my aspirations as a scientist? Should I do an MBA so I can get a jumpstart in tech management (I'm in my late 30s and have never even been a tech lead)? Should I rebrand as an AI researcher??