Their comment is based on historical facts, making it apples and oranges. Your speculation has no substance, but is 'absolutely' true? I'm not sure I follow that logic.
The apples to oranges is in reference to comparing Bitcoin to the AI's as a whole. AI as a whole survived the winter but a random implementation from 1985 did not. My comment was comparing Bitcoin as an implementation of a cryptocurrency to previous implementations of AI that have generated hype and then became either irrelevant or obsolete.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't back-propagation one of the major techniques in the AI of the 80s? It's 90% of mainstream AI today. Activision was one of the major publishers prior to the video game crash. Today it has the largest share of the market. Just because some things fall out of favor doesn't mean all of them do, especially the most popular ones.