Nor do they remember the previous AI boom of the 90’s and 2000’s, where the likes of Lernout & Hauspie were also promising the world. In that case they went bankrupt and executives were convicted of fraud, because they resorted to “creative” accounting to paper over solvency issues.

Capitalism baby

Exactly, they are a breakthrough built on top of decades of steadily paced progress. Those decades are conveniently ignored by the commercial interests, who like to act as if those once in a decade breakthroughs are actually the normal pace of research at their company, and the next one is right around the corner.