Introduction

From Vision to Delusion: Protecting Innovation from Hype Machine

The idea for this series came a few months ago, as I began to notice how the hype around GenAI is following the same path all hypes eventually take: money loss, disillusionment, and mistrust. More and more people are starting to question whether this technology is truly useful. Increasingly, papers are being published arguing that LLMs do not reason, do not think, and are hitting a ceiling. Even self-proclaimed AI experts have begun shifting their narratives—from praising AI to reducing it to a glorified spell checker. That, after all, is what the audience wants to hear now.

Originally, the plan was to write a book about this, and I still might. But for now, I’ve decided to publish a series of blog posts instead.

As technology continues to progress at an incredible pace, new opportunities arise and new business models emerge. A new buzzword always seems to dominate the conversation—whether it's ChatGPT, agents, GenAI, or, looking further back, radio, the internet, or the steam engine. At each stage, the popular media picks up the hype. Major outlets proclaim the end of all disease, quoting an AI guru, or the extinction of humanity because a prominent researcher tweeted it.

Now, in the era of large language models, this topic feels especially relevant. But human memory is short, and history keeps repeating itself. This is not the first time a revolutionary technology has emerged, and once again, we are seeing the same patterns and the same hype cycle.

This will be a story of disillusionment, success, and then stability. Most importantly, we will explore how to protect great technology from hype, how to recognize its potential, how to stay factual when everyone wants to hype, and how to keep believing in what you do when no one else does.

Here, we will analyze the patterns in hype cycles, draw parallels across time, and build a guide on how to distinguish between false promises and real potential and how to identify who is a false prophet and who is a true expert.