replace "AI" with any past trendy buzzword (big data, ML, XML, XaaS) and your statement remains exactly the same, hence, carrying 0 new information. just a historical observation :)
AI will do the same.
That a bunch of companies couldn't figure out how to use the internet is neither here nor there. There were plenty of factories that never figured out how to use electricity. Doesn't mean that steam power is still viable.
(Nb. someone using the term "AI" in 2024 can mean two things: either they just use it as a shorthand for referring to the currently hot incarnation of "AI", ie. "generative deep learning models with cross-attention layers", or they have no idea what they’ve talking about. And a priori the latter is much more likely.)
Sure, at this point generative deep learning models are somewhat likely be more like the internet and less like blockchains with regard to being an enabling technology. That doesn’t mean the hype cycle is not real.
Steam power is – and has always been – used to produce most of our electricity, BTW, and it’s only now changing, out of necessity.
I think the hype was there because companies needed to update their data to follow standards and update how that data interacts with other companies. The specifics of XML are less relevant - once things are standardized there can be standardized ways of converting to other formats.
Imagine needing to write custom parsers for every API; not needing that enabled SaaS APIs to be much more practical.
(And well, the OP's example of the internet is one that they missed.)