Silicon Valley’s tech bros are having a difficult few weeks. A growing number of investors worry that artificial intelligence (AI) will not deliver the vast profits they seek. Since peaking last month the share prices of Western firms driving the ai revolution have dropped by 15%. A growing number of observers now question the limitations of large language models, which power services such as ChatGPT. Big tech firms have spent tens of billions of dollars on ai models, with even more extravagant promises of future outlays. Yet according to the latest data from the Census Bureau, only 4.8% of American companies use ai to produce goods and services, down from a high of 5.4% early this year. Roughly the same share intend to do so within the next year. Gently raise these issues with a technologist and they will look at you with a mixture of disappointment and pity. Haven’t you heard of the “hype cycle”? This is a term popularised by Gartner, a research firm—and one that is common knowledge in the Valley. After an initial period of irrational euphoria and overinvestment, hot new technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment”, the argument goes, where sentiment sours. Everyone starts to worry that adoption of the technology is proceeding too slowly, while profits are hard to come by. However, as night follows day, the tech makes a comeback. Investment that had accompanied the wave of euphoria enables a huge build-out of infrastructure, in turn pushing the technology towards mainstream adoption. Is the hype cycle a useful guide to the world’s ai future?
Full opinion : Was Artificial generative intelligence just a hype and is it losing steam?
