AI Isn’t Dying. The Hype Is.

Hey everyone.

I hope your holiday treated you better than mine. I just crawled out of a flu, and now that my brain is back online, this hit me:

AI isn’t new anymore. What’s new is how loud the conversation got.

I think we’re at (or near) peak AI hype — where expectations are running faster than what most people can actually deploy in a stable way. That doesn’t mean AI is going away. It means the noise is about to thin out.

This happens with every major tech shift. There’s even a name for it (Gartner’s “Hype Cycle”): after the peak, flashy demos stop impressing, shortcuts stop working, and reality starts asking uncomfortable questions. Like: who owns this, what breaks, what happens on a bad day, and what’s the rollback plan?

And honestly, that next phase is good. Because what survives isn’t “cool tools.” It’s boring, integrated, reliable use — AI inside a real workflow, with limits, approvals, and something you can debug when it fails. Value measured in time saved, errors reduced, or response times improved… not vibes.

Curious where you’re at lately: more AI fatigue, or more clarity about where it genuinely helps?

6 comments