The Generative AI Hype is Almost Over

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Hello everyone and welcome to my newsletter where I discuss real-world skills needed for the top data jobs and specifically the AI Agent Role. 👏

This article we discuss the hype bubble for GenerativeAI has arrived.

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In late 2023, my teenage sons were asking ChatGPT to write their essays. By 2024, they had shifted to using it for brainstorming ideas. But as we head into late 2025, they are back to writing her own essays. Why? Because everyone’s writing started to sound the same — the cadence, the grammar, even the phrasing.

We’re likely at the peak of the AI hype bubble. It will burst. How and when, no one knows. But throughout history, every major technology wave has eventually deflated — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The AI race may reach a plateau, or perhaps the investment money will simply dry up (the more probable outcome). Either way, when a transformative technology stops feeling magical and starts becoming part of society’s everyday infrastructure, that’s when things start to get truly interesting.

And then there’s the AGI elephant in the room. Even some of the loudest voices proclaiming AGI in 18 months have since backed away. It turns out, much of that talk was more venture-capital theater than a credible technology roadmap.

Today, GenAI is moving so fast culture is having a hard time catching up. Industry is struggling because GenAI is so new, there are no best practices, no use cases to truly say it’s successful, education systems are figuring it out, so is everyone else. So it’s a wonderfully big mess and that’s both scary and fun. Right now, all of society is just playing with GenAI.

We saw this with the internet, telephone, printing press, telegraph, social media, smartphones. Once these technologies evolved out of their hype cycles, they became embedded. And that’s when we figured out how to answer the phone along with how and where to use it. There is a difference between the internet and World Wide Web, but most folks just call it “the internet” or “WiFi” without realising “WiFi” is just infrastructure to access the internet; plumbing if you will.

Culture is the ultimate arbiter of technology. It decides what happens. Humans always remain the authors of intent, the holder of responsibility and the weaver of context. This is what will happen when the GenAI bubble does aa fizzy pop and fuddle. And this, this is when it starts to get interesting.

This is when we have a wee bit of breathing space. Where we come up for air, sigh and chill on the digital beach for a while to figure it out. That’s when we figure out how to turn LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude etc.) into research assistants, writing aids, note takers, diagnostic assistants. But they remain tools operated by us, meaning-making creatures. For we make meaning, not machines. LLMs can’t make meaning because they are mirrors reflecting back what we already know.

When the AI bubble pops and the frothy churn of it all settles, we may well enter a period of human flourishing. Usually this comes about 50–60 years after a revolutionary technology enters society (as per Dr. Carlota Perez’ seminal work.) But it may come much faster this time.

We will better understand where AI fits. Other AI tools like Machine Learning or Natural Language Processing, will see new investments and they will improve. The AI Industry will go quietly back into the dim halls of thrumming data centres and digital labs.

Outside in the brighter world, where suddenly everyone has access to the same level of knowledge, we will do what we have always done through technology revolutions. We will use the process of bricolage, where we piece together all the little bits of desiderata from our uses and we create something new. Laws, rules and regulations will help with societal governance.

Businesses and manufacturers will develop best practices, a new skilled workforce will emerge, we will replace late-stage capitalism with, well, something. Hopefully not technofeudalism. No, it won’t be a utopia. That’s as daft as a dystopia. There will be rough patches (there already are). Instead of being swept along by the breathtaking whirl of AI, we will decide what role we want it to play. And because AI cannot think or truly reason, the machines will have no choice.

A plateau, a normalisation of things is what human societies crave and always work towards. Rapid changes in society create anomie, or normlessness. We like norms. Rather a lot. It’s why we created them as part of culture, humanity’s operating system if you will.

While no one can be certain, if history is a guide, we will progress and a new Golden Age may well emerge. With AI properly put in it’s place.

Thanks for reading and have a great day.