AI certainly have a LOT of substance, and the hype around it is awesome for the development of it. It means lots and lots of investment and new tech is being invented. It means things are getting cheaper and cheaper. It means things are getting more and more efficient.
It might not seem that way, as it requires more and more GPU power, more and more electricity etc .. but after deepseek was released, and other models will be released over the next year; affordable AI is here in that smaller companies can get by with one GPU - and play with it.
The thing that *does not* make sense to me is how there will be a large ROI for those who develop and research it. It will benefit the industry as a whole.
As an example, many smaller IT companies, not in AI, now have their own internal LLM running on their own servers. With the models that are available for free download. No need to pay for tokens. It's a one-time investment in a pretty good GPU, but then it's just "use it as much as you want". Employees are delighted to be playing around with LLMs - and the company gets "free" internal LLM.