You might think that news of “major AI breakthroughs” would do nothing but help machine learning’s (ML) adoption. If only. Even before the latest splashes — most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI tools — the rich narrative about an emerging, all-powerful AI was already a growing problem for applied ML. That’s because for most ML projects, the buzzword “AI” goes too far. It overly inflates expectations and distracts from the precise way ML will improve business operations.