A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle. Glyph outlines the pattern of every AI hype cycle since the 1960s: a new, novel mechanism is discovered and named. People get excited, and non-practitioners start hyping it as the path to true “AI”. It eventually becomes apparent that this is not the case, even while practitioners quietly incorporate this new technology into useful applications while downplaying the “AI” branding. A new mechanism is discovered and the cycle repeats.