Slang & Culture
Gartner Hype Cycle
A chart showing how attention to a new technology rises and falls in five phases: technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity. People use it to ask where AI tools sit on that curve. Studies have found the pattern holds inconsistently.
Origin
Introduced in 1995 by Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn in a one-off research report. It later became Gartner's annual "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies" report.