Really just a matter of when the bubble pops now, isn't it? There's just too much substantial evidence pointing to the fact that AI is simply not going to be the product the big players say it will be.
That said, the techniques that have come out of machine-learning research in recent years are indeed powerful, for certain, constrained purposes. That was true of other AI technologies in the past, but we don't call them AI anymore; we call them things like "rules engines". These days, you could take a curren-year press release about AI and use a cloud-to-butt style filter to replace all occurrences of "AI" with "statistics" and see virtually zero drop in factuality (thought a considerable drop in market sizzle).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
That said, the techniques that have come out of machine-learning research in recent years are indeed powerful, for certain, constrained purposes. That was true of other AI technologies in the past, but we don't call them AI anymore; we call them things like "rules engines". These days, you could take a curren-year press release about AI and use a cloud-to-butt style filter to replace all occurrences of "AI" with "statistics" and see virtually zero drop in factuality (thought a considerable drop in market sizzle).