Perhaps the uncertainty is more to do with the public being able to see this new tech; think what's happened in those 30 years, some of which you as a techie would have been well aware of but most people were clueless about. Those of us using PDAs at the time, most of the public didn't imagine constant wireless connectivity and powerful computers in their pockets. Networked games, neat tricks bunches of geeks ran at the time; today everywhere. Is AI really that much of an outlier other than public knowledge?