Will Artificial Intelligence be a victim of its own hype?

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Economic growth over the last 250 years has been driven largely by developments in technology. Today's successful organisations know that innovation provides the promise of commercial growth for those who can harness it and oblivion for those who either delay too long or choose the wrong technology to invest in.

While the complacent may bask in the illusion of stability, in most industries innovation is happening at an astonishing rate and the associated opportunities and risks have never been more stark. Of the companies who made up the FTSE 100 in the 1980s only 28 now remain.

Today's IT Director/CIO has the demanding responsibility to ensure that their organisation thrives through this period of change. Determining which technology innovations have the potential to successfully disrupt the market and to setup their organisation to drive strategic advantage therein.

The task of identifying genuine disruptive technology is made far more difficult by the sheer volume of hype that now accompanies each new innovation. Couple this with very short hype cycles (driven by a hungry media and our limited attention spans); new ideas are heralded, exaggerated and then dismissed with unhealthy pace. Anyone remember Big Data?

As I write, the hype cycle has reached new heights in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It is my personal belief that AI is the most exciting and important technology development that we have seen for some considerable period of time. In fact, after a 25 year career focused on helping organisations drive substantial strategic advantage from innovative technology, I would argue that AI is the most significant development we have seen for a generation.

And I'm not one for hype…..

Hype is AI's biggest threat.

The realities of AI's potential are impressive. Allowing a computer algorithm to 'learn' and then 'act' on this learning opens up a number of interesting opportunities.

For example, at its simplest level, the use of AI to automate complex, non-linear tasks has the promise of making organisations far more efficient. Customers will have the opportunity to benefit from these efficiencies and benefit also from the hyper-personalisation that results from the new data insights possible through deep learning.

Excitingly we can be confident in AI's ability to deliver as, at its heart, AI remains relatively simple. The concept dates back to the 1950's and remained a hot topic through to my own academic studies of the subject at Oxford in the early 1990's. The mathematical models are variants of largely well understood and well founded methods. What is new is the volume of data we now have at our disposal to 'train' AI engines and the computing power available to do so.

Progress of the technical aspects of AI have developed at an impressive rate over recent years. Adoption however has been far slower than many would have predicted.

Despite the substantial benefits the technology promises, AI presents a paradigm shift that organisations (and their regulators) are inevitably finding very challenging. Adoption requires a 'leap of faith' and substantial organisational change.

This leap of faith is exacerbated by the current hype cycle and this hype comes in many forms.

Sales pitches for many digital products now features the term 'AI'. While a useful sales term to help hook the unwary, the tagging of every aspect of technology as 'AI' is to further confuse those without a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

In short, when everything is termed 'AI', the value and power of true Computational Learning is lost.

Added to the prolific use of the term, further confusion is driven by the dystopian future some predict AI will lead to. Heavyweights like Hawking and Musk have highlighted risks AI may present in the future, their comments though vastly exaggerate the capability we have today and are likely to ever gain.


The AI movement is substantially more interesting and important than the hype that subsumes it. The confusion and fear that this hype has produced is materially slowing adoption. The challenge for us as an industry is how do we cut through the noise and start learning lessons of how to harness AI's substantial potential.

From a personal perspective I strongly believe that AI is industry changing. For those of us in technology leadership roles this is a time for clear strategic thinking, uncluttered by the hype that surrounds AI, in order to guide our organisations through the effective adoption of the technology. The decisions we make now may well determine the success of our organisations in the future.

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