10 ways you might be able to tell when an area of research is undergoing rapid expansion and society's expectations may be somewhat unrealistic ...
Your field might be getting a bit over-hyped when you attend your main conference and …
… you describe your evening to your wife: she thinks you’ve just been watching the latest Ironman movie.
… General Chairs are serving as bouncers at the opening tutorials.
… the attendance goes up by 60% but the number of submitted papers by only 10%
… your room key is bespoke printed with your conference sponsors.
… you’re involved in a debate about Artificial General Intelligence and you see that an attendee in the front row comes from Human Longevity Inc.
… attendees are slightly disappointed when Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t turn up.
… New York times articles refer to you as a ‘formerly obscure academic conference’.
… on the flight, the passenger in the seat next to you is reading one of your papers.
… people keep mentioning how different things are to the period just before the AI winter.
… one of the General Chairs is writing blog posts speculating whether the field might be getting a bit over hyped.