Generative AI is sliding towards “the trough of disillusionment.”
Blowing Bubbles
As large language models race to the Moon and AI-generated slop art pollutes government websites, AI spending is ballooning to epic proportions — and the bubble may be close to bursting.
That’s according to a recent analysis by Gartner — the Connecticut-based research firm famous for the Gartner hype cycle — which posits that worldwide IT spending is expected to total over $5.5 trillion in 2025, an increase of 9.8 percent from 2024.
IT sectors such as data centers, devices, and software “will see double-digit growth in 2025, largely due to generative AI hardware upgrades,” the report reads.
However, despite this unfathomable increase in spending, these segments are not ready to “differentiate themselves in terms of functionality yet, even with new hardware.”
That actual functionality is of course key to selling AI-as-a-product going forward, because sooner or later, stakeholders, clients, and governments are going to start demanding real, tangible benefits for their forest-melting efforts.
Referencing the hype cycle, Gartner research VP John-David Lovelock, said in a statement that “GenAI is sliding toward the trough of disillusionment, which reflects [Chief Information Officers’] declining expectations for GenAI, but not their spending on this technology.”
In short, AI companies are shelling out more and more to develop GenAI despite growing market skepticism of the tech’s use cases. If true, AI is entering a troubling chunk of its lifecycle, where returns slow and investor (not to mention user) expectations drop.
“Our expectations for what generative AI can and will do are starting to come down,” Lovelock told The Register. “We won’t make it to the trough until 2026, but 2025 is going to be a year of the slide.”
Burning Barrels
This forecast brings into question the logic underlying the incredible economic, environmental, and human costs of AI development. Though we in the US are no strangers to discarding social wellbeing for profit — take the commercialization of insulin, for just one of thousands of examples — we have grown less experienced since the heights of the space race at moving mountains where profit is not explicitly guaranteed.
When, for all their advancements, all these half-baked AI rollouts can offer are “leaked photos of heaven“, it needs to be asked: who are these advances for?
If AI developers are incapable of producing socially compelling use cases for their models, then burning through trillions of dollars in a never ending AI race isn’t anymore practical than a one-way trip to Mars.
More on practical AI: Pentagon Official Boasts That AI Is Helping The Military Kill People Faster Than Ever Before
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