Is the underlying assumption behind this text is that less innovation is happening right now?
Are the billions poured in AI not counting?
Unless there are any great results, no, they are not.
Tons of research money where poured into AI in the 60s-70s too, and when it got nowhere great, it all folded in the so-called "AI winter".
Billions poured into AI have produced some interesting tricks but little that changed the entire world of computing in the way those things have.
Yes, billions have been poured into AI and we still have no strong AI. That just shows that it's a problem that is way more complicated that inventing the concept of a pointing device, making computers talk to each other, or having applications show something on a screen that isn't text. The people in the 80s weren't smarter (or dumber) than the people of today, there were just a lot of low hanging fruits back then.
Even if this were true, which I disagree with, it has changed the world. Just because we don't still use the iPod anymore doesn't make it any less brilliant.
> The people in the 80s weren't smarter (or dumber) than the people of today, there were just a lot of low hanging fruits back then.
They didn't just take the low hanging fruit. In the 60s it was assumed that computers would just get bigger and bigger. They had to take the highest hanging fruit that everyone thought was ridiculous. They had to envision an entirely different world. So perhaps they weren't more intelligent but they had a more powerful vision of the future.
You're probably laughing at similar people today.
The people being given money for AI are expected to work on AI, not on whatever they think is cool.