Boring AI
activeOrigin: Alvaro Higes Substack: 'And AGI Went By: 2026 the Year of Boring AI'
Counter-narrative to AI hype: the real frontier has moved from public demos to private research loops and workflow automation. 'Boring beats flashy' — enterprise rollups and workflow standardization outperform 'agentic commerce' hype. Systems with verification, retries, and approval flows beat autonomous agents.
Usage
Used to signal nuanced, anti-hype credibility. 'I'm excited about AI, but specifically about the boring stuff that actually works' is a high-credibility position.
Mutations & variants
'Loops win' — systems with retries and verification beat agents
'Boring beats flashy' — the enterprise AI thesis
Shelf life: Active — the boring AI counter-narrative is gaining as the hype cycle matures
This is the 'anti-Shumer' axis. High credibility if delivered with specifics. Shumer = 'something big is happening, everything will change.' Boring AI = 'the real value is being extracted quietly by companies solving workflow problems.' Both can be true; they're about different layers of the same phenomenon.