April 1, 2026
Hype sirens at full blast
The AI Marketing BS Index
AI hype gets a scorecard and the comments go feral
TLDR: A new “AI Marketing BS Index” scores buzzword-heavy pitches and fake-sounding claims. Commenters cheer the call-out, demand harsher penalties for cherry-picked tests and rebranded tweaks, while skeptics argue the rubric oversimplifies necessary nuance—making this a loud, useful fight over how to spot hype before it wastes our time.
Move over, astrology—there’s a new scorecard for the stars of AI marketing. Inspired by John Baez’s “Crackpot Index”, the “AI Marketing BS Index” tallies points for classic hype sins: inventing things without proof, sprinkling science-y words where they don’t belong, ending paragraphs with pseudo-profound fluff, name-dropping Ivy Leagues, making unfalsifiable claims, and touting mystery "collaborations." The creator even starts every pitch at -5 points—benefit of the doubt, before the doubt wins.
But the real show is the comments. One crowd-pleaser fumes that every CEO brags “AI made us 10x faster,” yet the economy isn’t exactly cartwheeling—receipts, please. Others want stiffer penalties: “It’s not X, it’s Y” hedging? Make it 40 points, not 20. Power users pile on with new infractions: cherry-picking tests to look good, renaming tiny tweaks as “revolutionary,” and hiding system hacks behind flashy buzzwords—translation: stop dressing up minor edits as moon landings.
Then comes the pushback. A skeptic says the list misses real sins and misreads nuance—sometimes saying “not X, but Y” is just clarity, not con. Another jokes we should subtract points if a founder actually reads their own website before pasting it. Verdict? The index is part satire, part lie detector—and the crowd wants it stapled to every AI press release.
Key Points
- •The article proposes an “AI Marketing BS Index” inspired by John Baez’s “Crackpot Index.”
- •Every concept starts at -5 points, with points added for specified marketing missteps.
- •Penalties include lack of citations/specifications and misusing scientific terminology (10 points each).
- •Further penalties target hedging language, pseudo-profound statements, unwarranted claims of mirroring nature, misuse of “emergent properties,” and Ivy League name-dropping (20 points each).
- •Heavier penalties apply to unfalsifiable technical descriptions (30 points) and unverifiable research collaborations (40 points each).