HYPE INDEX WEEK 2026-20
methodology →–
A single number 0–100 capturing how hyped the AI conversation is this week. Built from four interrogable components below, each scored 0–25. Higher means more capability-claim volume, funding pressure, and mainstream media saturation — and less skeptic friction (the index is inverted on that component, so a noisy skeptic press lowers the score).
Trend chart populates as weeks accumulate.
GPT‑5 launch commentary spiked ‘phase change’ language; eval dispersion tempered the tails.
Mega-cap capex guides held elevated; vendor financing and GPU backlog stories stayed on page one.
Mainstream front pages ran AI explainers tied to GDP, jobs, and ‘sci-fi’ ledes—attention, not evidence.
Bearish equity notes and ROI skepticism were audible but not dominant; friction rose modestly vs the prior week.
Weekly takeaway
Driving claims
- GPT-5 could be a significant leap forward, but there's still a lot of work to do on it.
- DeepSeek’s public pricing and open-weight releases materially compressed the clearing price for high-throughpu…
- OpenAI does not expect to turn its first profit until 2029, when it expects its annual revenue could reach $10…
- We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it
v1.0 · pipeline @hand-authored-v1