Artificial intelligence isn’t over-hyped, it may be under-hyped: A conversation with Zack Kass

Key takeaways

• AI hype: Artificial intelligence may be under-hyped, given the cost, utilization, and commoditization achieved so far. 
• AI benefits: Artificial intelligence has shown enormous potential across education, business, science, and other fields.
• AI execution: Most companies are still figuring out how artificial intelligence can provide value for them and their customers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long since surpassed “next-big-thing” status. Society seems to recognize the possibility of generational change. The economy has experienced widespread experimentation and growing adoption across most industries. The market, driven by companies making large bets on AI, may have priced in a big payoff. Should we believe the hype?

Everyone’s talking about Artificial intelligence, even as few really understand it. Zack Kass is one of those select few. Kass, the former Head of Go-To-Market at Open AI, is among the world’s foremost authorities on implied artificial intelligence. His mission is to help businesses, nonprofits, and governments navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape. He joined the Greater Possibilities podcast after his keynote address at Invesco’s Breakthrough 2025, where he talked through his nuanced opinion on AI hype and other related topics.

Is AI over-hyped?

Hype can mean different things in different contexts. In terms of AI, hype might translate to market pricing and whether companies enjoying high valuations may ultimately deliver returns to justify them. The market may think so, and it has a pretty strong record at pricing companies, dot-com bubble notwithstanding.

Kass tends to take a broader view, instead looking at AI’s potential to radically change the human experience. “I don’t think most people have fully processed what it means to have unmetered intelligence,” he said. “…We are building very smart machines that are getting exceptionally cheap to run.”

In that sense, AI isn’t over-hyped. It may actually be under-hyped, given the cost, utilization, and commoditization achieved so far. And the benefits being realized are just the beginning.

What are some AI benefits?

Potential AI benefits are showing up in expected and unexpected places. For example, younger generations are overperforming in new and exciting ways. They’re learning more quickly. “They’re exploring business, science, arts, sports in new, incredible ways because they have access to [AI] technology,” Kass notes. “We are un-gating for many young people, what we used to gate in the form of education and technology and classes and coaches by just saying, ‘what do you want to learn? What do you want to be great at?’”

AI may also help drive down the cost of doing business. Consumers, and the companies that sell to them, are looking for better, faster, cheaper. In the long run, that could mean extricating humans from the production process. Automation will come for some jobs faster than others. Government policy will protect certain jobs over others. “We’re going to be faced with a different problem,” as Kass sees it. “it’s not going to be how do we put more and better food on the table. It’s going to be, what do we do with our time?”

AI may lead to major scientific breakthroughs. By speeding up the research process and pulling insights from datasets too large and complex for humans to understand, research may advance further faster. “We’re getting much closer than people realize to things like fusion, custom gene therapies, custom antibiotics, a lot of material and particle sciences improvements,” Kass notes. “This is in large part due to improvements in our ability to do incredible testing at scale through AI.”

What’s next?

A good economy evolves, and with it the standard of living improves. AI may hasten that evolution, though in what order and at what speed remain to be seen. Most companies are still figuring out where the value is for them. The urgency is there, but the tools to put it to productive ends are not. “There is this mad dash to buy lots of software right now,” as Kass sees it. “I think the software is going to end up being fairly either obsolete or misplaced inside of an organization.”

The hype, while largely justified, isn’t always productive.

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Originally Posted on February 10, 2026

Artificial intelligence isn’t over-hyped, it may be under-hyped: A conversation with Zack Kass by Invesco US