Let me just repeat that: "Microsoft" came to your school in 2002 and "confidently stated" that AI had been solved. Really interesting story.

Yes, they did. We had guest speakers from Microsoft talking about AI. AI has been a decades-long grift, it's not something that just appeared out of thin air a few years ago.

What part do you find hard to believe? That tech companies would send people to speak at a university's computer science functions?

Let me give you another one you'll think I'm making up: virtual reality was a thing back in the mid- to late-90s and people were confidently hyping it up back then.