The GenAI Pendulum

The tech world loves a good buzzword. For a while, GenAI has been the golden ticket. Every pitch, every boardroom, every startup was awash in promises of GenAI-driven revolutions.

But here's the thing about pendulums: they swing back. And not all pendulums swing the same way.

Imagine our tech landscape as a giant Foucault pendulum. At the poles, where value-focused companies reside, the pendulum completes a full rotation in 24 hours. These are the businesses grounded in reality, steadily moving forward. They don't need to adjust dramatically because they're already aligned with true north. I have the privilege of working with teams like SantaLucia that fall into this category.

At the equator of hype, there's no rotation at all. Here is where you find the most. These are the companies caught up in pure buzz, spinning in place without real progress. They have hundreds of generative AI use cases, with a few already in production or tied to multi-year, multi-million euro advisory services from consultancies and systems integrators feeding them with the use cases(!). How can they have so many use cases, each with a business case and ROI, and still not act on them? They must have done the math, right? Right? Their line-of-business leaders and executives are either frustrated or on the brink of frustration due to the lack of progress and success.They're in for a seismic shift.

The rest? They're somewhere in between. The closer to the pole of value creation you are, the less dramatic your recalibration needs to be.

Now, we're seeing a quieter shift. Companies that once shouted their AI ambitions from the rooftops are pulling back, reassessing, recalibrating. The magnitude of their adjustment depends on their "latitude" - how far they strayed from practical value in pursuit of hype.

Why? Because reality has a way of asserting itself. Even if it takes some time to do so.

Turns out, making AI work at scale is hard. Really hard. Those sleek demos don't always translate to real-world solutions. RAG systems, once hailed as the next big thing, are hitting their limits.

This isn't failure. It's the natural cycle of innovation.

The hype dies down. The hard work begins.

Now is when the real progress happens. Away from the spotlight, in the trenches of practical application.

Smart leaders are shifting focus. Instead of chasing AI dreams, they're asking, "How can we improve what we have?" They're finding their true north.

They're building foundations. Strengthening systems. Solving tangible problems.

Because true innovation isn't about following trends. It's about creating value.

The GenAI tools that survive this pendulum swing? They'll be the ones that actually work. The ones that solve real problems, not just hypothetical ones.

So if you're feeling GenAI fatigue, take heart. The pendulum swing is healthy. It's necessary.

It's clearing the way for what comes next.

And what comes next might just be something truly revolutionary. Not because it's hyped, but because it works.