"Thought leader" isn't an actual title (or at least it shouldn't be). In my mind, its simply someone who you recognize as having the expertise worth paying attention to.
It’s a title that is given to people to get them to present at junkets, a modern socially and legally acceptable way to bribe people. No one should take them seriously.
I just said the word "domain expert" in my head 5x, and I don't like it any better.
Both of them give off "influencer" vibes. They're meaningless without more context. We used to just call people "experts", but now that's an arbitrarily bad word.
If by "thought leader" you mean domain experts making criticism then yes.
For example, Nouriel Roubini calling out the risks of the 2008 Recession before it happened, Michael Pettis calling out the risks of a real estate balance sheet crisis in China before Evergrande happened, and Arvind Subramanian calling out the risks of a a shadow bank crisis in India before the ILFS collapse in 2018.
For AI/ML, I'd tend to trust Emily Bender, given her background in NLP which itself was what became LLMs originated from.
Hrm. I'd read "thought leader" to mean "hype man"; that's how the term is normally used. I certainly wouldn't read it as "domain expert"; the people generally referred to as 'thought leaders' frequently are not.
It's just another anecdote, but the "vibes" feel like they're shifting.
The employment numbers, the inflation numbers, government austerity, the gpt-5 disappointment... the valuations are all more like meme stocks and not based on reality.
If enough articles about the crash start appearing, and enough people believe the crash is coming, the congratulations: the crash will occur.
