*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

According to Dan Kotliar, technological advancements are accompanied by a certain degree of hype, or hyperbolic discourse. The internet, for example, was accompanied by a democratization hype with scholars and pundits arguing that the internet would enable new forms of democratic participation. Social media was associated with a revolutionary hype which suggested that it would help topple tyrants, despots and dictators who could no longer exert total control over public opinion. The Arab Spring protests help boost this. Over the past two years, the world has been in the grips of an “AI hype”. Journalists, tech moguls and academics have all stated that AI will radically change daily life, impacting numerous professions while altering how knowledge is produced, how art is created, how citizens are policed, how policy is formulated and how human relationships are formed. AI doctors will replace physicians, AI bots will displace psychologists, AI coders will replace tech employees, while AI agents will replace lawyers and legislators. These predictions all suggest that AI is fundamentally different from previous technological advancements. The “AI moment”  is an evolutionary one as humanity is about to evolve into a new state of AI-enhanced existence.

Hypes can be both positive and negative. The advent of the internet was also accompanied by concerns of disparities between rich and poor, or between those that could afford an internet connection and those that would be left out of the new digital town square. This is also true of AI with some warning that AIs could become so advanced that they “go rogue”, ignore their programming and unleash unparalleled catastrophes such as nuclear wars. What is most noteworthy about technological hypes is that they shape state policies. Hypes are visions of the future. They are cognitive roadmaps that define a set of possible futures. Yet these visions of the future are limiting as they prevent policy makers from using their imagination or leveraging new technologies in new and original ways. Instead, policy makers come to view technologies through the narrow prism of several dominant hypes. Presently, states and policy makers seem to view AI through four dominant hypes: Bloom, Boom, Gloom and Doom.

The “Bloom” hype is inherently positive suggesting that AI will increase our quality of life. AIs will facilitate personalized medicine, remote care and telemedicine enabling states to offer citizens the best care possible. AI-based tutors will create a personalized learning curriculum allowing students to reach their full potential. AIs will help to predict and rapidly respond to crises and emergencies while reducing the costs of services such as energy bills lowered thanks to smart homes. The AI state will be smarter, cleaner and more efficient. It is this hype that is impacting policy makers’ decisions to integrate AIs into various state systems such as healthcare, education and even diplomacy.

One example is the proposed integration of AI into Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs). Already in June of 2023, the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy published a report outlining how AIs could undertake routine diplomatic functions such as authoring drafts of press statements, generating press reports, authoring content tailored to different........

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