A.I. Hype: Culture & Consequences
If one is to believe the hype, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is embedding itself into every aspect of our modern lives, from cars and phones to toothbrushes, ovens and refrigerators and every single industry is being upended. Our world will never be the same. Except none of this is true and people are increasingly disbelieving the hype.
For the companies building and rolling out various AI tools, from the tech giants to all the myriad of startups, the hype they’ve created may be having a bit of a cultural moment, but not the one they’d hoped for.
There are some superb applications of AI tools in medicine, environmental management and the development of new materials and more. Generative AI can become a valuable sidekick for humans and will likely end up creating more jobs than are lost, as have all revolutionary technologies. But the overhype today risks damaging all the good that has been done with AI for years.
During the “.com boom” of the ate 90’s to 2001, I cofounded and exited two tech startups. It was heady days indeed. I spent a fair bit of time in Silicon Valley, New York and Toronto. Y Combinator and incubators didn’t exist. Neither did social media like today. This was also when the model for generating hype around technologies came to be defined and over the past twenty or so years, refined. It works. It’s a lot of fun.
