Misrepresented Technological Solutions in Imagined Futures: The Origins and Dangers of AI Hype in the Research Community

TL;DR

This paper examines how AI hype originates and spreads within the research community, highlighting its risks to society and proposing measures to mitigate unfounded claims and prevent harmful overestimations of AI capabilities.

Contribution

It analyzes the cyclical influence of media, perception, and regulation on AI hype and offers strategies for researchers, regulators, and the public to address these issues.

Findings

AI hype can lead to harmful societal impacts

Research community plays a key role in spreading hype

Proposed measures can reduce unfounded AI claims

Abstract

Technology does not exist in a vacuum; technological development, media representation, public perception, and governmental regulation cyclically influence each other to produce the collective understanding of a technology's capabilities, utilities, and risks. When these capabilities are overestimated, there is an enhanced risk of subjecting the public to dangerous or harmful technology, artificially restricting research and development directions, and enabling misguided or detrimental policy. The dangers of technological hype are particularly relevant in the rapidly evolving space of AI. Centering the research community as a key player in the development and proliferation of hype, we examine the origins and risks of AI hype to the research community and society more broadly and propose a set of measures that researchers, regulators, and the public can take to mitigate these risks and reduce the prevalence of unfounded claims about the technology.