Is the AI hype coming to an end?

Over the last two years, it seemed impossible to browse the internet or social media without encountering something about AI. Whether it was some news post about ChatGPT passing a university exam or an article about crazy predictions that in 10 years we will all be living in some post-capitalist utopia because AI has solved all of our problems and replaced all of our jobs. However, it seems the AI hype is finally beginning to cool down. Even tech giants like Microsoft and OpenAI have become more cautious in their statements about achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

The hype

This hype cycle was caused by the release of Open AI’s ChatGPT. As it quickly became the fastest growing application ever due to both impressive technology and some clever marketing, it sparked everyone's imagination of where this could go. However, this led to an environment ripe for scams and exaggerated claims. Especially because companies and individuals made use of the hype to increase the value of their company or get investments from FOMO-driven investors. Two examples I find quite hilarious are Rabbit r1 and Amazon’s cashier-free stores. The Rabbit r1 sold 20 000 units in 2 days after their launch. They hyped it up so well but completely lied about the technology, calling it the Large Action Model which was supposed to be their new invention. Turns out it was just GPT-3.5 with some questionable prompting. A few days later, some solo developer created a clone of the app for your smartphone. I wish I was as good at marketing though. Then there was the Amazon’s just-walk-out stores that were using AI to scan peoples faces and what products they were taking so it automatically would purchase those products in their amazon account. You just walk in, get what you want, and walk out. Turns out there were about a thousand humans in India watching the footage and manually doing the work. Perhaps what they meant with AI was ‘Advanced Indians’.

The amount of companies I’ve seen that claim to use AI without actually having anything to do with AI is astonishing. This reminds me of the dotcom bubble of the early 2000’s where companies were adding ‘.com’ to their names just to increase the stock value and get more attention from investors and customers. Most didn’t have anything to do with the internet but that didn’t matter. The hype was real and everyone tried to jump on the bandwagon.

What we are witnessing is a classic example of the Gartner Hype Cycle. First, there’s the “Technology Trigger,” followed by the “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” after which the bubble bursts, leading to a “Trough of Disillusionment” before the technology sees gradual and realistic adoption. Currently, we are likely at the peak of inflated expectations.

Of course reality is not precisely divided in those classifications and there are companies that are not part of the hype. Many are genuinely building AI systems with long-term value, focusing on sustainable development and realistic applications. One such example is the startup I am trying to build, Onceover.ai, where we are leveraging AI technology to help large companies with high volumes of applicants and small companies with limited recruitment resources to hire the best candidates, without inflating expectations.

The actual technology

AI is an academic field of study that studies how computers can behave intelligently or simulate biological intelligence. The main technological implementation of this field is machine learning, a programming paradigm where instead of programming the rules explicitly, you show the computer many examples, so it can create a model of those rules implicitly. Most of the methods are not new and have been used for decades in science, engineering, medicine and defence. It is of course the large language models and their application in conversational agents like ChatGPT that sparked this new wave of unrealistic expectations. The actual technology is evolving, although much slower than people think, and will lead to amazing next-generation products over time that are better than the previous generation. AI is going to be a useful tool for solving many problems, but it will not solve them for us.

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