MIT’s AI Hype Index reveals gap between promises and reality

MIT Technology Review’s AI Hype Index highlights growing concerns about artificial intelligence’s real-world impact, pointing to questionable AI applications and infrastructure problems affecting local communities. The monthly assessment reveals a disconnect between AI’s promised benefits and its actual outcomes, as businesses invest hundreds of billions of dollars without clear returns while data centers create power blackouts and water shortages for neighboring residents.

What you should know: The latest AI developments paint a troubling picture of technology deployment without clear purpose or consideration for consequences.

• NGOs and aid agencies are using AI models to generate images of fake suffering people to manipulate their Instagram followers into donating.
• AI translators are producing low-quality Wikipedia pages in endangered languages, potentially accelerating their extinction rather than preserving them.
• New AI data centers are forcing neighboring communities to deal with power blackouts and water shortages as infrastructure struggles to keep up with demand.

The big picture: Despite massive corporate investments, AI’s practical value remains questionable as companies pivot to the technology without understanding its capabilities or purpose.

• Businesses are throwing around buzzwords like “optimization,” “scaling,” and “maximizing efficiency” to justify AI investments.
• The hundreds of billions of dollars being pumped into the industry aren’t translating into measurable benefits for most customers.
• MIT Technology Review suggests these investments “maybe never will” add up to meaningful returns.

Why this matters: The gap between AI hype and reality is becoming increasingly apparent as real-world applications create more problems than solutions.

• Communities living near data centers are being forced into their own “pivots”—fighting against the infrastructure problems AI expansion creates.
• The technology is being deployed in ethically questionable ways that exploit vulnerable populations and potentially harm endangered languages.
• Corporate AI adoption appears driven more by fear of missing out than by strategic understanding of the technology’s actual capabilities.