Cast A Critical Eye Over The A.I. Hype Merchants

Like mainframe computers in the 1960s, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform business. But the key to utilising it will be realising its limitations.

- Adam Lashinsky

Like bees to honey, tech trends generate hype. Merely appending the word “dotcom” to a company’s name drove up stock prices in the Internet’s salad days. Cloud computing, big data, and cryptocurrencies each have taken their turn in the hype cycle in recent years. Every trend brings genuinely promising technological developments, befuddling buzzwords, enthusiastic investors, and reassuring consultants offering enlightenment—for a fee, naturally.

Now the catchall phrase of artificial intelligence is shaping up as the defining technological trend of the moment. And yet, because the claims of what it will achieve are so grand, businesses risk raising their hopes for A.I. too high—and wasting money by trying to apply the technology to problems it can’t solve.

Consider the bubbly warning signs. Venture capitalists are beyond eager to fund A.I. They staked 1,028 A.I.-related startups last year, up from 291 in 2013, says researcher PitchBook. Twenty-six of those companies had “A.I.” in their names, compared with one five years earlier. Then there’s the profusion of conferences promising to explain A.I. to the benighted manager. At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the agenda this year included no fewer than 11 panels that reference A.I., with names like “Designing Your A.I. Strategy” and “Setting Rules for the A.I. Race.” (Fortune has gotten into this act too: Its 2018 Global Tech Forum in Guangzhou, China, was dominated by A.I. discussions.)