Bubbles

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, not a rock star, but a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

Happy New Year!

This week, I came across this article “The rise of AI denialism” by Louis Rosenberg, a computer scientist and CEO of Unanimous AI, who argues that characterizing AI as a “bubble” misses a profound technological shift, and reflects a collective first stage of grief, as society struggles to come to terms with the scale of change and are in AI denial.

Whether you agree with this premise or not, it’s an interesting read. I shared it with some chums via email and on LinkedIn, and it got a bit of a reaction, on several points, but specifically that the article seems to draw a line, you either agree, or if you think it’s a bubble, you're a denier.

I’ve been interested in the idea of the bursting of the AI bubble for a while, as I've noticed commentators, including this article from Rosenberg, conflate two bubbles that I think are happening.

The first is a bubble of hype, the sort of thing that Gartner’s Hype Cycle describes, that a technology gets so hyped that it reaches a “peak of inflated expectation”, before it slides down into the “trough of disillusionment” as it fails to deliver on the hype, before stabilizing into mainstream adoption on the “plateau of productivity”.

In marketing, this hype was sucking all the oxygen out of the room in 2025, when it came to discussing strategy, planning, and technology decisions. I think we are now seeing a reaction or a correction to this, with a focus on the fundamentals, as my chum Robert Rose says, “having an AI strategy will be as relevant as having an electricity strategy”, it’s just stuff we use.

I can imagine some AI use cases crashing and burning into the “trough of disillusionment”, never to be mentioned again; meanwhile, you could argue that we are already seeing AI enter the “plateau of productivity” as it becomes part of our everyday work. The underlying technology clearly is valuable, maybe invaluable now.

The second is the bubble of the “dotcom bubble” kind, coming from the folks old enough to remember the eary 2000’s.

There is the potential that there will be a correction in the valuations of the companies behind the technology and some shake-up among vendors, especially as the current pricing model seems unsustainable, as a big chunk of the cost of compute is energy, not something that can be mitigated by scale or a Moore’s Law type argument about improvements in the hardware. And, of course, Chinese companies, with their lower costs, are entering the fray.

When folks talk about the bubble bursting, I think this is the bubble they are referring to, the financial one, which is not wholly determined by whether this is a profound technological shift, but by market forces, pricing, positioning and which vendor makes the leap from early adopters to a profitable mainstream or a niche that can be served at a premium price.

Personally, I think we can hold both thoughts in our heads, both of these bubbles could burst, or maybe they won’t - but recognizing that there is some frothiness in the hype around the technology or the valuations of these companies, does not make you an AI denier, we can still recognize this is a profound technological shift.

After all, the financial dotcom bubble might have burst in the early noughties, but we still have a dotcom.

That’s my thought for this week, while I don’t fully agree, the Rosenberg article is worth a read. What do you think?

If you are a regular reader, you’ll know, the subject line of this newsletter is always a song title. If you are a fan of the premier league here, you might think for an email about bubbles, I might pick the 1918 American song West Ham fans sing “I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles”, but no, it’s a great excuse to share a bit of fun - Bubbles by UK rapper Dizzee Rascal, from 2007 which might not have been issued as a single, but is from his splendid “Maths + English” album.

Enjoy - have a great week.

Cheers!

Ian

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No video, and maybe not a tune you are familar with, but Dizzee Rascal cannot fail to put you in a good mood on a dark January day, and help you get your marketing mojo working.