Abstract

There is a literature across science and technology studies, sociology of science, and philosophy examining the phenomenon of hype in science and technology. While definitions of hype vary, most accounts share a critical stance, viewing them as misleading or distorting scientific and public discourse. This paper takes a different approach by asking whether certain aspects of hyping might, under specific conditions, be beneficial. Rather than thinking about hype as isolated episodes, I think about hyping as a communicative strategy that affects decision-making under uncertainty. While individual instances of hype are harmful and often short-lived, as a practice, hyping might nevertheless be efficient in allocating resources. I draw an analogy between aggressively promoting the potential of emerging technologies despite significant uncertainty, and the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithm in reinforcement learning, a strategy shown to perform well in problems involving multiple uncertain choices. By drawing this analogy, I identify the conditions under which hyping can function as a collective implementation of UCB in a multi-agent, distributed context. To do so, I present a formal model that allows us to think about hyping as a mechanism for orchestrating public attention and helping shape the direction of scientific inquiry.