In Gartner’s annual Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, genAI has passed the Peak of Inflated Expectations. What’s next is inevitable.

Every year, Gartner releases Hype Cycles for various technologies. As they note in their explanation of Hype Cycles here, Gartner’s Hype Cycle methodology gives you a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time, providing a sound source of insight to manage its deployment within the context of your specific business goals. Each Hype Cycle drills down into the five key phases of a technology’s life cycle:

• Innovation Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.
• Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.
• Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.
• Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.
• Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

Last month, Gartner released their Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2024. And guess what? GenAI has passed the Peak of Inflated Expectations! As Gartner states: “In 2024, more value will derive from projects based on other AI techniques, either stand-alone or in combination with GenAI, that have standardized processes to aid implementation. To deliver maximum benefit, AI leaders should base future system architectures on composite AI techniques by combining approaches from innovations at all stages of the Hype Cycle.”

Great! But guess where genAI is heading next? That’s right, the Trough of Disillusionment. In the current diagram, generative AI is starting to move down the slope and is right on the line between the end of the Peak of Inflated Expectations and the beginning of the Trough of Disillusionment.

That’s the bad news. But every new technology goes through a period of inflated expectations, followed by a period of disillusionment, when the technology must evolve and mature, while expectations for that technology become more reasonable.

I’ve started to notice a lot more negative stories about genAI. Concerns about ethics and safety and data protection, about its use of energy, water and other natural resources, etc. It’s only natural for these to exist and they will be among the concerns that need to be addressed for genAI to reach its true potential.

When will that be? According to Gartner, genAI will reach the Plateau of Productivity within 2-5 years. That’s pretty quick!

Why don’t I have a picture of the Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence on this blog post like I did last year? Because it appears to still only be able to those who pay for the report and companies that license the report from Gartner for distribution. If you Google “Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2024”, you should see companies that have done so and you can go get the report from one of them for free (I did), if you’re willing to provide your email address and other info. It’s worth it, as it discusses many other AI technologies besides genAI and where they sit on the Hype Cycle. I will add the picture later if it becomes publicly available.

So, what do you think? Are you surprised that genAI has passed the Peak of Inflated Expectations? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4o’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot standing at the edge of a cliff looking at the abyss below”.

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