> Basically it's because what "AI" can do is extremely different from what "AI evangelists" claim it can do.

You always have people at both sides of the aisle though - people who say it can do much more than it can, and people who say it can do much less.

It's the same with all technologies - robotics, crypto, drug discovery, the internet, digital cameras, quantum computing, 3D Television, self-driving cars - it was probably the same with the steam engine. All of these will have had people who said that the technology would be useless and die (e.g. Napoleon and the steam engine), and others that would have said it was totally transformative.

Pointing to people who hold extreme opinions 'for' a particular technology that are overly-bullish, and then dismissing the technology based on that, isn't a particularly good strategy in my opinion.