Artificial intelligence is a feature, not a product, and like every other technology, it’s starting to fade into the background. Apple last week announced that it is embedding generative AI technology into Siri and other applications in iPhones, including a deal with OpenAI. Most Google searches now include an AI Overview. Microsoft has branded Copilot+ PCs for new Windows hardware. It sure looks to me like AI is on its way to being dial-toned. What do I mean? It was a Boston telephone operator strike in 1919 that ushered in the era of dial tones to replace humans. A pleasing tone delivered simplicity, musically asking callers “number, please,” hiding all the complexity of relay switches, tubes and amplifiers. AT&T was a hot stock in the 1920s as phones proliferated. Same for companies deploying other advanced technologies, such as radio. Eventually, investors stopped caring. Technology almost always vanishes from sight on its way to becoming productive and ubiquitous. Does that mean the end of the current AI hype cycle? Soon enough. We live in a dial-tone world—extraordinary complexity made so simple that it disappears. Push a button and your car starts. Fill it with gas and vroom vroom, you’re off, ignorant of drilling, refining and pipelines. Or charge your electric vehicle by plugging it in, not knowing or caring about transmission lines, generators or emissions. They’ve all been dial-toned; complexity disappears. Same for cellphones: no dial tones but coverage bars similarly dissolve the complexity. Most users think 5G service arrives via immaculate reception rather than comprehending orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and millimeter waves and optic backhauls. Compaq was once a hot stock selling PCs, which included a magnetic disk spinning at 7200 rpm with a read-write head floating nanometers above the disk. Amazing. Did you care? Me neither. Automakers used to be hot stocks. Same for electric utilities. Heck, airlines were once hot stocks. Even software-as-a-service stocks have cooled. Investors marginally care but have mostly moved on.
Full opinion : As with every new technology, artificial intelligence hype will fade as its uses become ubiquitous.
