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.

> virtual reality was a thing back in the mid- to late-90

even in pop-culture, see the movie Lawnmower Man.