AI For The Skeptics: Pick Your Reasons To Be Excited

A technology writer reflects on the AI hype cycle from a skeptic's perspective, examining why people like 'Guy In A Suit' get excited about LLMs for the wrong reasons — feeling smart, seeking magic bullets, and fearing missing out. Using the Gartner Hype Cycle as a framework, the author argues that those jumping on the AI bandwagon in 2026 may have already missed the peak, and that the real opportunities lie further along the curve, in applications not yet imagined. The author remains cautiously optimistic about human-written content surviving, and encourages tech-savvy skeptics to channel their skepticism into finding genuinely interesting AI applications rather than dismissing the technology entirely.