I get why people think it&#x27;s hype.  The core math and CS for soft AI and statistical machine learning (neural nets, decision trees, unsupervised learning, etc) has been around for a long time, for sure.  I did some R&amp;D work with them in the 90s &#x2F; 2000s.  Interesting projects, but they weren&#x27;t practical or cost effective at the time.<p>But, very recently, some interesting hardware, software, data sources, and business models have evolved and converged that make &#x27;AI&#x27; much more practical and realistic.  And, just take a look at recent research papers and popular open sourced projects, and it&#x27;s clear that many of the smartest people in the industry are working on it.  Some very creative and innovative things have been happening in an ambitious space that had been kind of stagnatant for decades.<p>Think of AI of today like &#x27;The Internet&#x27; was like like 1991.  Probably more impactful, actually, because the major tech companies are throwing billions at it.  There are many more people with skills and knowledge to move it forward.  And, we all know that Alphabet is moving toward constructing personal intelligent agents for everyone on the planet. It&#x27;s going to be a very interesting decade.