[bruth]

AI has been a field since the 50s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#Histor...). Methods have been developed over the years, but the primary blocker has been computing power and data sizes in order for them to be effective. That is the primary reason they appear "in vogue" now because we have access to cloud computing and large datasets (or synthetic ones can be generated).

The best thing you can do as a developer to determine if AI is relevant to you, is read about how AI is being applied (the use cases) and if they sound interesting, learn the methods. Eventually you will discover if and how they apply to your work.

I can't speak to blockchain but that is orthogonal to AI.