Amongst all this hype and bandwagon jumping on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Cognitive Technologies is also a sense of unease. How is it that a technology that has roots going back as far as the beginnings of computing is suddenly now the hot “must have” technology that’s powering ever-more dramatic amounts of money being pumped into a few skyrocketing startups? The industry has gone through two major waves of AI development and promotion with their own periods of sky-high hype only to sink dramatically back to earth once people realized the limitations of what surely was being hyped as being on the cusp of sentience. And so here we are again, in the “summer” of this wave’s AI adoption wondering if this will all last, or if billion-dollar unicorns are being funded in an environment that’s sure to pull back the reins of overinflated expectations.
