Today’s AI hype-fest is partially IT’s fault

I came across a LinkedIn post the other day that described “hypegineering,” which the poster explained refers to the moment when AI “marketing becomes more innovative than the technology itself.” That post came from Ralph Aboujaoude Diaz, the global head of GRC for British consumer services company Haleon. Until last year, Diaz worked in operations cybersecurity for consumer goods giant Philip Morris.  In his post, Diaz added that “side effects may include believing mediocre tech is revolutionary, confusing hype with progress, buying solutions to problems you don’t have and defending it like your job depends on it.” As amusing as that might seem, the problem is frighteningly real. The sad truth is that enterprise IT executives are partly — perhaps mostly — to blame for the current hype around AI. For many decades, senior IT leaders (pre-dating when it was called MIS) were the technology hype-deflators with razor-shape BS detection skills. That level of skepticism was needed. Tech vendors have always exaggerated and left out critical context when they weren’t outright lying about their products.  Enterprises trusted the IT gate-keepers to ferret out reality from the smoke and mirrors.  But there was a critical difference back then: senior management (especially CEOs, CFOs and board members) didn’t pay much attention to tech. They wanted the benefits, but they left the details to IT management to sort things out. With senior managers, benign neglect can be an incredibly good thing.  As much as we might all think that we want our bosses to really care about our efforts, be careful what you wish for. (For Dilbert fans, think of the pointy-haired boss; a boss who has strong beliefs but no understanding of technology is a nightmare.)  Alas, that is the situation many enterprises find themselves in today. IT management fully understands the level of absurd hype coming from a multitude of AI players. But unlike years and technologies past (RFID? NFC? Biometrics?), deflating hype balloons is easier when it’s comes solely from vendors. When senior managers start spouting this garbage, IT’s hype-deflation ability morphs into contradicting the very people at the top of their own corporate food chain. That forces IT leaders who want to stay gainfully employed to do a lot of what used to be called lying. “Well, boss, yes these agentic systems have guardrails that will block destruction,” the lie begins, “but we can’t anticipate what any user or attacker might say in a prompt.” That’s far more corporate acceptable than the actual truth: “Boss, a guardrail that an agent can disregard isn’t a guardrail. It’s more of a mild suggestion.”  Or IT could say, “Well, yes, boss, autonomous agents could exponentially increase efficiency — as long as you’re OK with the risk that they might send our internal data to the competition.” For the sake of the company, tech leaders and decision-makers need to reassert themselves and perform serious reality checks on all AI efforts. But this is more fraught than merely contradicting a top boss. IT  could be seen as embarrassing that top boss by pretty much proving that they were either naive or ignorant enough to be conned by the hype.  Telling them they’re wrong seems nicer than calling them stupid. And yet, someone in IT has to find a politically palatable way to do both.