The analyst firm Gartner has said that generative artificial intelligence (AI) has reached the so-called Peak of Inflated Expectations on the Hype Cycle. The Hype Cycle is broken up into five segments: Innovation Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and the Plateau of Productivity.
The company also marked generative AI with a blue circle on its chart which means that it will reach the Plateau of Productivity in the next two to five years, a relatively short time. Other technologies it says will plateau in two to five years are AI-Augmented, Cloud Sustainability, Causal AI, Postquantum Cryptography, GitOps, and more.
According to the Hype Cycle, expectations for generative AI are at their highest right now. Soon, expectations could plummet as it passes through the Trough of Disillusionment and people learn about all of the limitations around generative AI and the novelty wears off.
Discussing other Emergent AI technologies, Gartner writes:
‘In addition to generative AI, several other emerging AI techniques offer immense potential for enhancing digital customer experiences, making better business decisions and building sustainable competitive differentiation. These technologies include AI simulation, causal AI, federated machine learning, graph data science, neuro-symbolic AI and reinforcement learning.’
One of the clear ways we can see that there’s a lot of hype around generative AI is by looking at the stock price of NVIDIA - its hardware is basically powering the generative AI revolution.
Several months ago, Neowin had a look to see if the NVIDIA share price was fair at $380 per share and determined that it was overpriced. Today, that same stock is now valued above $435 but the underlying fundamentals haven’t changed that much.
NVIDIA’s share price will be interesting to watch as generative AI starts its tumble down into the Trough of Disillusionment. According to Gartner, the Trough will see interest in generative AI start to wane as experiments and implementations fail to deliver and investments only continue flowing to successful providers.
It’s worth noting that the Gartner Hype Cycle is pretty subjective so generative AI’s placement on it is more of a fuzzy estimate rather than a precise one. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see where Gartner thinks the technology is at and how long it will take for mainstream adoption.
Source: Gartner