However I don't think an AI winter is coming, as the author's asserts (towards the end). Applied AI research is driven by orgs like DeepMind and OpenAI, as well as academics. This powerful symbiosis of industry and academia will, in my opinion, continue to yield technological breakthroughs in the coming years and decades.
We seem to be oscillating wildly between three poles: Hawking's "AI will doom us all", IBM's "strong, friendly AI is right around the corner", and the skeptic's "strong AI is a pipe dream, or centuries away!" All three of those voices interfere with the possibility of sharing a useful, accurate view of what AI is and what it can be.
As bad as science news and public knowledge of science generally are, the situation is much worse on strong AI, and I think it's right to lay some of the blame for that with IBM and similar hype artists.