This talk is a human-centric dissection of the AI hype cycle, and a continuation of last year’s A perspective on the evolution and future of products.
It unfolds in four parts:
- Context. It starts with how the hype-vs-reality debate is focused almost entirely on technological aspects and why this framing is misleading for the strategic decisions all of us must face: what skills to build, which tools to use, and how to steer our career or business.
- Historical parallels. It then zooms out to compare today’s generative AI push with the medieval Crusades — the same reasons for the urgency and the same type of players employing the same belief system components for their machinations. The nature, purpose, and fate of hype bubbles haven’t changed for millennia.
- Continuity and Analysis. Picking up where last year’s talk left off, the talk maps generative AI’s features onto the three fundamental feature categories carried over from human evolutionary history — utility, efficiency, and engagement. This categorisation is the key to telling which parts of the current AI wave are useful and to whom.
- Strategy. Based on these historical patterns, and the speaker’s industry experience, the closing offers concrete short-term and long-term strategies — what to do amidst the hype with your skills and career, regardless of how the technology evolves.
This talk ends the day on automation and sense-making, offering a thousand-year vantage point for telling the signal from the noise.
