AI Hype Cycle: Peak or Just Beginning?

Is AI hype reaching its peak or just beginning? Tom Chavez, Founding General Partner at super{set} and serial entrepreneur with exits to Salesforce and Microsoft, challenges the notion of an "AI arms race" as misleading. He distinguishes between compound AI systems that integrate multiple specialized tools versus truly autonomous agents, arguing we're still in the early stages of development while emphasizing practical applications that deliver measurable business impact over theoretical capabilities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.

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  From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.

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  Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

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  Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

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  If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Tom Chavez, a co-founding general partner at Superset. Tom has built and sold startups to some of the biggest tech companies in the world. And now he runs a venture studio that funds data-driven AI applications to deliver practical business results. And today, Tom and I are going to delve into what's real and what's not when it comes to AI's impact on marketing. All right, moving on to our last question. This is a tough one. Has the AI marketing hype cycle peaked or are we still in an upward trajectory?

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  I think we are still in an upward trajectory, approaching that saddle point that takes us into the drop of despair. I don't think we're on the downside of that curve yet. And the reason I say that is because we don't have enough clear organizing distinctions even that help us understand what really constitutes an agentic AI system, for example. Everyone is Just making it up. Again, exciting and we like to play that game, but I don't think that there's enough of a clear framework even for understanding and taxonomizing the types of systems and the types of ways in which you build AI. You were talking, for example, earlier about the different tools that you use to create an AI-first podcast studio. There's not like a master agent that does all of that for you. I think of what you were

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  describing as a compound AI system where you're using bits and pieces of different tools and that's for real, that's valuable. That's some distance away still, as all of these systems are, from true autonomy, true hands-free, have the agent go do the thing while I go to sleep or have a martini. We're far, far away from that.

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  I think we're in the foothills. We're not quite at base camp, but we're still in our first lift line of the day, going up the mountain to ski down. It is early, early, early. And we talked about being a production company and the different ways that I use AI to pre-production and post-production editing and, and marketing and research and guest analysis, all the different places where it's great. I'm integrating artificial intelligence into the way that we work. But I think at some point, agentic AI becomes smart enough. And also, I don't even know what to call it, engineering AI, where I can be an efficient engineer without needing additional resources, where I could say, these are the rule sets for the system that I've built. Now go automate the process for me. And eventually my systems

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  become developed enough where I don't have to operate the widgets and the buttons that I'm pushing every day. I think that that is five to 10 years away. I don't know exactly how long, maybe it's two, but I think that the notion of using AI to help with the last mile work is great. And that's where we are now. Eventually, it's going to be doing some touchpoints. Fundamentally, it's going to be building the infrastructure for us. It'll be the code language we use and anybody can use it. So I think that we are far off from the end of the hype cycle personally.

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  100%.

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  Wonderful. Tom, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing your experience. And look, it's an evolving topic. I'd love to have you back on the show and talk a little bit more about AI as it continues to develop.

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  I've really enjoyed the conversation, Ben.

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  And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Tom Chavez, the co-founder and general partner at Superset for joining us. If you'd like to contact Tom, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile, which is in our show notes or on martechpod.com. Or you could visit his company website, which is superset.com. You can also find Tom on his podcast, which is Closed Session. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed next week. Okay, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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  Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit ihereverything.com.