Are We in an AI Hype Cycle?

A hype cycle, as Gartner defines it, is formed by the five key phases of a technology’s life cycle: a technology breakthrough that generates a lot of publicity, a peak of inflated expectations (think Justin Bieber pouring more than $1 million into NFTs), the trough of disillusionment (winter sets in as experiments or implementations fail to deliver), the slope of enlightenment (the technology matures, potential applications crystallize, a period of cautious optimism sets in), and finally, the plateau of productivity (the technology finds its footing in the market and mainstream adoption takes off).

Nothing in recent memory has triggered a public response equivalent to the one that followed the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022.

Here’s a quick peek into some of the previous defining tech hype cycles of our times:

Virtual Reality (VR): Although the first VR Head Mounted Display was developed in the 1960s, VR technology didn’t grab headlines until the early 1990s, with companies like Nintendo releasing VR headsets. It generated significant buzz but remained a niche and expensive technology. Without much buy-in for a long time, VR experienced a period of disillusionment and took several years to mature.

Then, in the 2010s, there was a resurgence in VR tech, with the advent of Oculus. Facebook acquiring Oculus in 2014 was classic peak expectation of the hype cycle. While VR was initially developed to enhance the gaming experience, it has gradually found use cases in healthcare, education, and other industries. VR headsets are seeing more mainstream traction now, with Apple announcing its own VR headset in June 2023 and Meta launching a VR subscription service in a bid to make that service more profitable.

Cryptocurrency/Blockchain: In 2017, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, experienced an enormous surge in popularity. The value of cryptocurrencies skyrocketed, and numerous ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) were launched to fund various projects. However, as the technology faced scalability, regulatory, and security issues, the hype plummeted, leading to a more realistic evaluation of its potential.

That is until a spectacularly bleak winter in 2022 sent crypto-believers into a frenzy of panic and despair. This plummet has naturally produced wariness among stakeholders. Fortunately for investors, despite the vagaries of crypto, blockchain (the technology powering crypto) is steadily gaining ground as a sound method to create a secure and unchangeable record of transactions across industries — from accounting to voting applications to personal identification security.

Has ChatGPT Triggered (Another) AI Hype Cycle?

Ever since the 1950s, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had its share of doomsday prophets (well-respected researchers who shared an ambitious prognosis for when AI would outmatch human intelligence) and skeptics (equally well-respected researchers who were unconvinced that we would ever get to that point). The reality has been somewhere in between these two poles: chatbots have made their public debuts, then crashed and burned, while algorithms have quietly taken over our experience of the online. But nothing in recent memory has triggered a public response equivalent to the one that followed the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022.

Gartner estimates that the least amount of time any new technology takes to hit the plateau stage of the hype cycle is approximately two years, but ChatGPT went through the entire hype cycle in a matter of 3 months. It reached 1 million users within 5 days of its release, accompanied by increasingly dramatic media predictions by the day. Everything from “ChatGPT will replace teachers” to “will make coders redundant” was predicted, and expectedly, the hype died.

After initial reactions of excitement, wonder (and fear), a course correction followed (ChatGPT makes basic mistakes, ‘hallucinates’ responses, can be jailbroken i.e., manipulated into sidestepping its own programming). Once expectations were adjusted and realigned, we entered the plateau stage — tutorials and handbooks that instructed various professionals on “how to maximize their productivity with ChatGPT” or “how to get the most out of it.” And now, it is arguably already in the mature, adoption stage. Google and Microsoft are working out how to integrate GPT-like chatbots into their search functionalities (bye-bye, SEO?).

Regardless, experts have reason to believe that this is not just “another hype cycle,” but the Fourth Industrial Revolution playing out, as AI blooms into a formidable tech bull market with trillions of dollars worth of spend in the years to come. A common understanding among tech experts is that while concepts like the Metaverse remain nebulous to many, generative AI is being built on top of technologies that have been decades in the making and already embedded in business processes. In other words, the work needed to establish its viability has already been done.

Image by vecstock

Where Do We Go From Here?

The problem with living in a time like this (where every innovation is heralded as the future, and some truly boggle the mind) is that a certain fatigue sets in beyond a point. Claims of disruption or transformation simply elicit a raised eyebrow or a shrug. Perhaps, that’s the very essence of the hype cycle. Only once the hype is over and the dust settles do we get a real sense of the practical applications of a newly emerged technology.

That’s when the transformation truly begins.

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Written By: Techquity India