The chill before the storm: Why AI’s hype could freeze over

It wasn’t the first time I’d faced the question, and certainly won’t be the last. I’ve been through several cycles of scientific hype — nanotechnology in the early 2000s, the Human Genome Project before that, and even the bold claims that string theory would “solve physics”. Each began with sky-high promises and rivers of funding, only to cool into something more modest, sometimes disappointingly so.