Breaking News… Finally, the Gartner Hype Cycle is defeated with Artificial Intelligence!

AI is the technology breakthrough that everyone’s been waiting for but wouldn’t bypassing the “Expectations” curve be the proof of the pudding to show the real value AI brings, by optimising its own route to market?

I have been reading several articles on how AI will affect us, what problems it will solve and what services are needed to make it all happen. The truth as always is that for a long time to come, the answers are still in the human mind. We as engineers, developers, programmers, consumers and visionaries will decide how AI comes to life.

The “tongue in cheek” AI bypass in the graph above is based on Bill Schmarzo’s blog article where he suggests like many, that you start with the End in Mind. (https://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/why-accept-the-hype-time-to-transform-how-we-approach-emerging). Life would be simple if we knew what we wanted, knew when we could get it and pay very little for it. Indeed, this is exactly what the AI gurus capitalise on; dumbing down humans, taking away our pains, simplifying our existence, moving further away from natures law.

Ultimately, AI is a tool for humans created by humans. Its no more than that. As a technology, it will drive our economy, it will expand the minds of at least part of the population to the cost of the remainder. Credit were credit is due, there is good research coming through and we are opening new channels by combining biological and synthetic materials, looking at new solutions to remove plastics from the oceans, looking at the larger global challenges we face in the not too distant future. But the solutions will come from human minds with algorithms and computational power provided by AI supporting them. The misnomer about the machines taking over the world has been around since the dawn of modern times, but it will ultimately be humans that will destroy humans (and everything else) if we don’t keep our eye on the ball.

With all that said, we have to go through the hype cycle to ask the difficult questions and fantasise about the future. It’s a curve we are enslaved to and as much as we want to believe AI is different and it towers beyond everything else that came before, I’m afraid we’ve got suckered again!