The Real AI Transformation Starts When You Stop Talking About AI

You can always tell when a technology is peaking on the hype curve; everyone is talking about it, few are doing it well, and almost no one is getting value out of it at scale.

That’s where AI has lived for the past couple of years.

We’ve been drowning in think pieces, demos, and “copilots” for everything. Everyone has a slide with ChatGPT on it. Everyone has a roadmap with AI sprinkled in. However, despite the noise, the number of businesses truly transformed by AI remains surprisingly small.

Ironically, that’s starting to change… not because we’re talking about AI more, but because the people doing the most meaningful work with it have stopped talking about it altogether.

Post-Hype AI Doesn’t Look Like AI

The most impactful AI transformations I’ve seen this year didn’t start with prompt engineering or LLMs. They began with problems:

• Too many documents clog review workflows.
• There are too many repetitive decisions that could be automated.
• Too many people waste time searching for the same information repeatedly.

In these cases, AI wasn’t a centerpiece. It wasn’t even branded as AI. It was quietly embedded in workflows:

• Classifying and triaging records behind the scenes.
• Summarizing key insights for human decision-makers.
• Enabling automation by making unstructured data usable.

And that’s the point.

The best AI isn’t something you “use”…it’s something you build around. It’s plumbing. It’s infrastructure. It fades into the background of your business process while unlocking something fundamentally better.

Why the Hype Phase Has to Die

Every technology experiences an awkward phase where interest surpasses understanding.

Cloud computing went through this and blockchain experienced it. Artificial intelligence (AI) is in the midst of this phase, even if most don’t know it yet.

While the hype cycle can be necessary, it also brings risks. It fosters unrealistic expectations, leads to misguided investments, and generates a false sense of progress. This environment often pushes teams to incorporate AI into systems that are not prepared or to train users on tools that they may not even need.

However, we are beginning to witness a change. Executives are starting to ask more complex questions. Teams are engaging in quiet experimentation. Builders are shifting their focus from “AI” to achieving tangible outcomes.

This shift from merely discussing AI to actively using it marks the beginning of a fundamental transformation.

This Is What Real AI Transformation Looks Like

If you want to see what AI transformation looks like, stop looking for the word “AI” in the user interface and start looking for impact.

• Are turnaround times improving because of behind-the-scenes classification?
• Are your teams making faster decisions because systems are surfacing better context?
• Are you automating workflows that were previously impossible because now your data is structured and meaningful?

That’s real AI and it’s already happening…just not with the fanfare people expected.

What Comes Next

I’ve led enough digital transformation efforts to know the pattern:

• First comes curiosity.
• Then hype.
• Then disappointment.
• Then, eventually, the quiet integration that drives value.

Have we entered that last phase with AI. I don’t think so, we still need to go through the period of disappointment and disillusionment, but we will get there. And the people who understand this…who are building with AI instead of building around it…are the ones who will come out ahead.

So if you’re still trying to prove you’re using AI… maybe you’re not using it in the way that matters.

The future of AI isn’t loud. It’s disciplined, embedded, and impactful to both the bottom and top lines. And it’s already underway.