Little by little, the AI hype, like all hypes, starts to fade out.
It always happens.
Who remembers the famous blockchain or the crypto crazy days?
The .com bubble that was supposed to make every business obsolete overnight?
Of course, they’re still there, alive, but not grabbing the attention/impact they had years or decades ago.
With AI it’s exactly the same.
We, as humans, love big and fast changes. Revolutions. Overnight successes.
We still believe business transformation works that way, but it’s never the case.
Change goes much slower than we think and, in the end, market reality and practical implementation always win the battle against hype.
We’ve accelerated how information spreads, but at its core, meaningful business adoption moves much slower than the headlines suggest.
Remember when we thought that by 2025 we wouldn’t drive anymore?
The reality?
Last week I had an 8-hour drive to my holidays.
Obviously more comfortable than in my parents’ era, but essentially the same: a car with four wheels and a long road ahead.
The same pattern repeats with every “revolutionary” technology.
The internet took decades to truly transform how most businesses operate.
Even today, countless companies use it simply as another utility, like electricity or phone service, rather than as the revolutionary force it was once promised to be.
E-commerce was supposed to kill physical retail yet, for example, shopping centers not only survive but continue growing.
Through my marketing agency, one of my four businesses, I’ve watched this market segment expand dramatically over the past two decades, with one of our service lines dedicated entirely to mall and shopping center clients.
What the digital prophets missed was that humans still crave physical experiences and social interaction.
I’ve witnessed this cycle personally across multiple technology waves, and the pattern remains consistent: big promises, gradual reality, eventual integration as a useful tool rather than a magic solution.
This isn’t pessimism about AI’s potential but rather recognition of how business transformation actually works in the real world, away from Silicon Valley conference stages and venture capital pitch decks.
Three Signs the AI Hype Is Already Cooling Down
I want to share three examples that prove this isn’t just my opinion but a pattern already visible across the industry.
I could share thousands of similar cases, but these three capture what I’m seeing, not only at the Paperless Movement®, but across all my businesses.
First, the early AI adopters are quietly stepping back.
This week I read an interesting post on X by Tobias van Schneider, co-founder of Mymind, a software tool I love as an essential part of my Shallow Thinking system.
Mymind was one of the first tools (along with Mem.ai) that bet on AI since day one.
Here’s what van Schneider shared.
In 2019 they launched Mymind when AI was brand new and most people weren’t talking about it yet. This was before ChatGPT even existed.
At the time they prominently featured AI in their marketing because it felt genuinely magical and gave them a real competitive edge since few companies were leveraging this technology yet.
However, around a year ago they quietly began scaling back their AI messaging.
What once felt special had become commoditized.
Rather than serving as a differentiator, their heavy focus on AI messaging started to feel like it was actually diminishing their product’s perceived value.
Van Schneider’s conclusion?
“I believe the most impactful technology often operates invisibly in the background, enhancing experiences without demanding attention. Instead of talking about AI, we focus on building our brand and building a product that ‘simply works’. We simply let the results speak for themselves rather than the underlying technology.”
“Technology is at its best when invisible.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Second, the reality check is coming from unexpected voices.
Cal Newport, in his latest newsletter titled “What if AI Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This?”, delivered a sobering analysis that many in Silicon Valley don’t want to hear.
He pointed out that while tech CEOs make increasingly bombastic claims about AI replacing entire job categories, the actual progress tells a different story.
When OpenAI finally released GPT-5 after months of anticipation, it was “marginally better than previous models in certain use cases, but worse in others.”
Within days, over 4,000 ChatGPT users signed a petition asking to bring back the previous model because they preferred it.
Newport’s research revealed that the breakthrough performance of earlier models was due to improvements in pre-training, but this approach hit diminishing returns after GPT-4.
Companies turned to post-training techniques instead, which produce incremental improvements rather than the large leaps in capability we once expected.
As AI commentator Gary Marcus told Newport: “I don’t hear a lot of companies using AI saying that 2025 models are a lot more useful to them than 2024 models, even though the 2025 models perform better on benchmarks.”
Third, the financial reality is catching up.
Even Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, recently told reporters that investors are “overexcited about AI,” directly contributing to concerns about a growing AI bubble and triggering a major tech sell-off.
The numbers back up these concerns.
An MIT investigation found that 95 percent of attempts to incorporate generative AI into business are failing or stalling out. Meanwhile, the AI industry is accumulating massive debt, with private credit funding running at around $50 billion per quarter.
The core problem? Despite companies pouring ungodly sums into AI infrastructure, the industry has yet to prove a viable path to profitability.
As one S&P analyst put it: “Data center deals are 20 to 30-year tenor fundings for a technology that we don’t even know what they will look like in five years.”
These aren’t isolated incidents.
They represent a fundamental shift from hype to reality, from promises to practical results.
The pattern is clear: we’re moving from the excitement phase to the “prove it works” phase.
The Hidden Cost of Chasing Every New Technology Trend
I’ve always believed when we try to accelerate things to the maximum, sooner or later, we fail.
Things need to follow a natural path, and a big revolution in just two years is a fairy tale.
No matter how much technology has evolved, we still cannot make miracles.
Things need time. We need to digest everything we implement. We need to fail, retry, and grow in the process.
If we try to jump over standard stages, it won’t work.
But there’s something more dangerous than failed implementation: the opportunity cost of constantly pivoting.
While you’re spending months learning the latest AI prompting techniques, your competitors are perfecting their core business fundamentals.
While you’re restructuring your entire workflow around the newest productivity app, they’re building deeper relationships with clients using systems that actually work.
I’ve seen this pattern destroy more businesses than outdated technology ever could:
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The CEO who spent six months implementing blockchain solutions that never delivered ROI.
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The marketing director who rebuilt their entire campaign strategy around NFTs just as the market collapsed.
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The operations manager who trained their entire team on a revolutionary project management tool that shut down eight months later.
The real cost isn’t the money spent on these tools. It’s the focus lost, the momentum broken, the credibility damaged when you constantly change direction based on the latest trend.
Your clients don’t care if you’re using the newest AI assistant. They care if you deliver results consistently, communicate clearly, and solve their problems reliably.
These fundamentals haven’t changed in decades, and they won’t change with AI either.
This doesn’t mean avoiding new technology entirely. It means evaluating it through the lens of business impact rather than technological novelty.
What Smart Leaders Do When the Hype Dust Settles
I think we pushed too hard on the AI thing.
This doesn’t mean it’ll have no impact at all (I’ve already improved how I work thanks to AI), but we can perfectly state that it will become a good tool for specific use cases, improving the way we work and the quality we deliver.
Little by little we do things in a different way.
Whenever I think about the past, how my father or grandfather worked, things have impressively changed.
We’ve increased the speed of many things and the outcomes a person can deliver, but talking about much more fundamental and basic things, they haven’t evolved so much:
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I’m still sitting at a desktop.
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I still need to figure out how to make my businesses profitable.
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I still need to engage my clients, retain them, improve their lives.
Now I’m offering my services all over the world, something quite difficult in the past, but many other things still remain the same.
“When everyone is doing it one way, there’s an opportunity to do it differently.” — Seth Godin
The difference between leaders who thrive through technology cycles and those who get burned isn’t about being early adopters or late adopters. It’s about understanding the difference between tools and fundamentals.
Smart leaders don’t chase technology. They let technology chase their problems.
They ask different questions:
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Instead of “How can we use AI?” they ask “What specific business problem are we trying to solve, and could this technology help?”
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Instead of “Everyone else is doing it,” they ask “What’s the measurable impact on our core metrics?”
This approach requires patience, which goes against everything Silicon Valley preaches about “moving fast and breaking things.”
But patience isn’t passivity. It’s strategic timing.
Amazon wasn’t the first bookstore on the internet, but they understood that online retail was about logistics and customer experience, not just having a website.
Tesla wasn’t the first electric car company, but they focused on making electric vehicles desirable and building charging infrastructure.
The same pattern applies to every technology wave.
The winners focus on solving real problems better, faster, or cheaper.
The technology becomes a means to that end, not the end itself.
This is why successful leaders think outside the tech bubble.
There are millions of people who have no clue about AI, and that’s perfectly fine.
Surgeons, plumbers, policemen, lawyers, logistics experts, all kinds of professionals for whom technology sounds weird, they don’t like it, and they’re just end users of what others deliver.
The world isn’t as sci-fi as many of us think, predict, or wish.
During my last holidays, I paid attention to all the people outside my world, a vast majority.
People who deliver products and services that are demanded, offered, and charged, that have nothing to do with technology.
They see technology as a commodity, being fully focused on their expertise, whether it’s food, wine, leisure, travel, or any other of the millions of professions that exist.
Your Competitive Edge Isn’t Learning AI Prompts
First off, you shouldn’t be afraid thinking you’re missing out of something big that’ll destroy your work, your income and your life.
AI is nothing but another asset to delegate things.
When you delegate things to a co-worker, a supplier, an employee, you delegate, but you keep the control. It’s the exact same thing with AI.
You need to see AI as an ally with potential that can help you through your work and life. Not as an enemy, not as a threat.
All technology has always ended up helping humans to evolve, and AI won’t be an exception.
The most important thing is having control, understanding what you do.
You can never lose control of what you’re doing, especially because it’s by doing that we learn.
This is where most professionals get it wrong.
They think they need to become AI experts, master complex prompting techniques, or understand the technical intricacies of machine learning to stay competitive.
That’s like thinking you need to understand how semiconductors work to use a computer effectively, or how internal combustion engines operate to drive a car.
Take cab drivers. Years ago, we thought robots would make those jobs disappear.
Here we are still taking cabs with human drivers, but they’re enhanced with technology. They receive calls through apps, follow GPS instead of paper maps, and work more efficiently.
The driver’s competitive advantage isn’t knowing how GPS satellites work. It’s knowing the city, understanding customer service, and making people feel safe during their ride. The technology just makes him more efficient at what he already does well.
Your situation is identical.
Will drivers disappear? Who knows. Yet, it’ll be much slower than expected. And that will happen with anything technology-related.
“Focus on the things that don’t change.” — Jeff Bezos
The pace of change gives us a crucial advantage that most people overlook: time.
Things change much slower than we think, which means we have plenty of time to react, readjust, and deal with obstacles, risks, or threats. The key is using this time wisely rather than panicking or rushing into hasty decisions.
The internet took decades to be truly implemented, and millions of businesses still use it as a commodity.
The businesses that thrived weren’t the ones that immediately transformed everything, but the ones that gradually integrated new capabilities while maintaining their core strengths.
Here’s my interpretation of where AI should actually fit in your professional life: AI is for developers and only for end users at its basic level.
Software should do the heavy lifting and the ones who bet on that approach are the ones who will win the game of the mass, the huge non-technical society that understands we’re human beings.
People who don’t want to learn the intricacies of electricity and just want to turn on the light because their lives are complex enough without adding layers of complexity like AI prompts, AI fields in a database, and more nerdy things that maybe you and I love, but not the majority.
This is the mindset shift every busy professional needs to make: stop trying to become an AI technician and start thinking like a strategic delegator.
But here’s the question that matters: How do you actually maintain control and delegate strategically in practice?
The answer isn’t learning more AI tricks. It’s building something much more fundamental.
The Brutal Truth About What Actually Makes You Competitive: A System That Survives Every Technology Wave
Here’s what’s going to surprise you: while everyone else is panicking about AI taking their jobs, the most successful professionals I know are doing the exact opposite of what the “experts” recommend:
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They’re not learning AI prompting.
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They’re not restructuring their entire business around ChatGPT.
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They’re not even paying attention to 90% of the AI noise.
Instead, they’re doubling down on something most people have completely forgotten about: control.
But, how do you take control?
It’s easy: by designing, building and implementing your tailored-made productivity system.
But not the kind of productivity system you’re thinking of.
I’m talking about a productivity system so fundamentally designed that it works whether AI exists or not.
A productivity system that makes you more valuable as AI gets better, not less valuable.
This productivity system gives you the control and peace of mind that allow you to be competitive and productive: to produce better outcomes faster and with higher quality.
Here’s what makes this approach different.
The core principle is simple: build systems based on human behavior and business fundamentals, not on specific technologies.
Your productivity system should work whether you’re using AI tools, traditional software, or even pen and paper.
The technology should enhance the system, not define it.
While your competitors are spending months learning the latest prompting techniques, you’re going to eat their lunch by mastering five unchanging principles that have created more millionaires than any technology ever invented:
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Capture everything in one trusted system so your mind stays clear for thinking, not remembering.
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Process information regularly to separate what requires action from what’s just reference material.
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Focus on outcomes, not activities, measuring what actually moves your business forward.
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Delegate systematically, whether to people or tools, while maintaining oversight and control.
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Review and adjust regularly based on results, not on what’s trendy or new.
What’s remarkable about these principles is that they haven’t changed since the 1950s.
They worked before computers existed.
They worked during the internet revolution.
They worked during the mobile revolution.
And they’ll work long after the AI hype dies down.
“AI will not replace managers, but managers who use AI will replace those who don’t.” — Elon Musk
But here’s the kicker: when you master these fundamentals, AI becomes a superpower amplifier instead of a threat.
When new technology appears, evaluate it against these principles:
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Does it help you capture information more reliably?
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Does it make processing and organizing more efficient?
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Does it improve the quality of your outcomes?
If yes, it might be worth integrating.
If it just adds complexity or requires you to change fundamental workflows that already work, skip it.
Your competitive edge comes from understanding your clients’ problems deeply, delivering consistent quality, building relationships, solving complex challenges in your industry.
AI might help you do these things faster or better, but it won’t replace the need to do them well.
Here’s what this means in practice.
The professionals who thrive through every technology wave aren’t the ones using the newest tools. They’re the ones with the clearest systems, the most disciplined processes, and the deepest understanding of what actually drives results in their business.
While everyone else is chasing the latest AI trend, you’ll be building something that makes you indispensable: a reputation for delivering consistent, exceptional results regardless of what technology is trendy this month.
That’s not just competitive advantage. That’s career insurance.
And the best part? You probably already have everything you need to start building this productivity system today.
Build that foundation first. Everything else is, as always, just tools.
