Tech workers privately doubt AI hype despite company investments

Tech workers across the industry are privately expressing deep skepticism about AI hype, despite their companies’ massive investments and public enthusiasm for the technology. According to tech entrepreneur Anil Dash, most technical employees believe AI tools like large language models have utility but are being dramatically overhyped and forced upon users without addressing legitimate concerns about sustainability and corporate control.

What you should know: A significant disconnect exists between AI messaging from tech leadership and the actual sentiments of technical workers.

• Tech workers believe AI technologies have legitimate uses but are concerned about the “absurd way they’ve been overhyped” and how they’re being “forced on everyone,” according to Dash’s observations.
• Many employees fear speaking up about these concerns, worried that not appearing as “mindless, uncritical AI cheerleaders” could be career-limiting in the current environment.
• Companies have laid off thousands of tech workers while simultaneously doubling down on AI investments, with leaders threatening to fire employees unwilling to embrace AI at any cost.

What they’re saying: Industry insiders are becoming more vocal about AI’s limitations and overhyped promises.

• “Very few agree with the hype bubble that the tycoons have been trying to puff up,” Dash concluded, arguing that the “mainstream of tech culture is thoughtful, nuanced and circumspect.”
• Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI cofounder, said AI agents “just don’t work” and “don’t have enough intelligence” during a recent podcast appearance.
• “They’re cognitively lacking and it’s just not working. It will take about a decade to work through all of those issues,” Karpathy explained about current AI agent capabilities.

In plain English: AI agents are software programs designed to automatically handle multiple tasks in sequence, like scheduling meetings, booking travel, and managing workflows without human intervention—essentially digital assistants that can complete entire processes on their own.

The big picture: The AI industry continues burning through cash at an alarming rate while riding an enormous wave of hype that experts worry could lead to a bubble collapse.

• Analysts are concerned about AI companies pouring money into one another while propping up the entire US economy, viewing this as a major warning sign of an AI bubble.
• Companies are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to data center buildouts despite a return on investment remaining “a mere glint in the eye of tech leaders.”
• Agentic AI emerged as a major industry talking point this year, with companies promising autonomous workflow automation, but that future appears to be years away.

Why this matters: The growing gap between public AI promises and private industry sentiment suggests the technology may be heading for a significant correction as reality fails to match inflated expectations.