Well, that "minority" is essentially the same community that invented the term in the first place. It's not like what you're observing is some ghastly secret: the AI community hasn't been seriously trying to construct strong AI for 25+ years. "AI" is a bad term, and doesn't accurately describe much of the work that is done in the field -- fair enough. Considering that trying to build strong AI is a pipedream anyway (IMHO), I don't think that's such a disaster. The person asking the question was plainly talking about weak AI techniques anyway.