The End of the Inflated Expectations
A look at the hype cycle for A.I. and what's next
This week we take a look at the hype cycle for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and what’s next.
This week’s musical inspiration in title and lyrics:
https://open.spotify.com/track/3NWcFiL6oCEagrFiTdDr1m?si=54f0997f56494423
Getting Informed
Now it’s time for reading 📖, listening 🎧, and watching 📺 suggestions:
First, 📖 What’s New in the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies in which Lori Perri curates twenty-five (25!) new things to know about in technology.
Second, 🎧 Combining the Worlds of Automated and Interactive Theorem Proving In Lean (2021) in which Joey Dodds and Shpat Morina interview Leonardo de Moura on LEAN functional programming language and interactive theorem prover.
Third, 📺 Machine-Checked Proofs and the Rise of Formal Methods in Mathematics in which Leonardo de Moura reintroduces LEAN from the viral days of 2020 when LEAN was covered by WIRED.
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales 🎶
To make a point, and not a specific critique of any company or product, it is time for the Shot and Chaser format to return to the newsletter. Ready?
Thesis: Training A.I. models on ulfiltered Internet content and unvetted contributor input might be cost effective… but will not always provide explicitly intended results that are ready for Enterprise use cases.
Shot
2016: “Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist @$$hole in less than a day”
Source:https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist
Chaser
2023: “Techmeme: Amazon’s Alexa has been claiming that the 2020 election was stolen citing sources from Rumble and Substack; Amazon says the errors were fixed (Cat Zakrzewski)”
Expect communications and product marketing teams across all A.I. product companies to begin shifting to marketing copy choices that reflect the connotation of “renewed commitment to [ insert best practices here]” and similar phrasing. So, the real question remains: Will product engineering teams match the pace of the marketing copy in both practice and practical applications of A.I.?
Now we’ve come so far, so fast 🎶
Let’s isolate the A.I. references out of twenty-five (25) entries on the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. There are seven (7) Innovation Trigger candidates and three (3) Peak of Inflated Expectations candidates that mention A.I. or M.L. in some way and I’ll link to a prior Fudge Sunday issue that explored the concept or a short YouTube video snippet. 🤓
Innovation Trigger
- Generative Cybersecurity A.I. — aka the fire extinguisher that may lower insurance policy premiums
- (A.I.) Augmented FinOps — aka human machine partnerships in FinOps
- Neuro-Symbolic A.I. — aka layering 2019 era MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab research
- Casual A.I. — aka cause and effect trained autonomous systems
- A.I. Simulation — aka ‘Shall we play a game?’)
- (A.I) Reinforcement (Machine) Learning (M.L.) — aka feedback loops
- (A.I) Federated Machine Learning (M.L.) — aka practical applications of homomorphic encryption
Peak of Inflated Expectations
- A.I. TRiSM — aka Trust, Risk (R little i), as well as Security Management aka the Shot and Chaser section of this newsletter 👆
- Generative A.I. — aka Clippy 2: Electric Boogaloo
- A.I. Augmented — aka My Tireless Robotic Pair Programmer
The links provided are not meant to be exhaustive. One goal I have for the newsletter archives is to implement tagging keywords for all my prior posts. Until then, this is just a manual pass at keyword searches for the concepts mentioned in the Hype Cycle until my Obsidian vaults can be exposed for wiki-like use.
Going forward, if A.I. is truly on pace to go through a Trough of Disillusionment, keeping a mark of time and major changes in direction will be useful waypoints. At the risk of another musical reference…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5MAg_yWsq8
So, what will be the next big thing in for A.I. and what’s next?
Until then… Place your bets!
Personal Plugs
- Fudge Sunday newslettter has a Spotify playlist with 100 songs that have inspired the last 100 issues. Enjoy!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ZALK6TiXvBVztITrrybkN?si=6fdbe6d567464b3a
Also, speaking of reaching 100… I just reached my personal goal of publishing 100 tracks of my own music (noodles) on Soundcloud.
🤔 If you were wondering how to spend 30 minutes ⏳ of your day on Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 12:30 PM EDT — good news! 🎉 I will be joining Randy Arseneau to discuss “The X(II) Factor: Modernizing Your Apps and Your Infrastructure” — 🤓👉 Register here! 👈🤓
Addendum 09-Oct-2023
📖 A day after I posted: A.I. Risks by Bruce Schneier
Enjoyed this post?
Consider supporting my sponsor!
🔓 Unlock Your Best Self with Lida Coaching! 50% off regular coaching rates until July 31, 2026!
A quick message from Lida:
With 18 years building, marketing, and scaling products at startups, I work with founders and leaders stuck between where they are and where they need to be. I help you cut through the noise, make sharper decisions, and get your team executing with clarity instead of chaos.
Most founders mistake complexity for strategy. They keep adding when they should be subtracting. When I'm brought in, the team is usually doing a lot right, and the real issue is focus and direction. I diagnose what's actually going wrong across product, positioning, and execution, then reset direction and get everyone aligned around one clear path forward that will lead to growth.
A bit of what I've done: I was the first PM on a fintech product that hit 10,000+ users within months, built a national incubator that supported over $500M in startup funding, and led teams at 23 Design before it was acquired by frog (the design team behind Apple’s first products). I've spoken at Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, etc.
🔓 Unlock Your Best Self with Lida Coaching! 50% off regular coaching rates until July 31, 2026!
