It is extremely useful in the right circumstances. When people say it isn't useful or that it's 'stupid', they're not looking at the proper use cases - every tool has good and bad ways to use it (you wouldn't use a hammer to peel an apple).

For example, we will soon have fully rendered smoke simulated at real time in 3D spaces (ie. video games) because we can calculate a small portion of how that smoke looks and then have AI guess what the rest looks like (with shockingly good results!)

AI is not a fad, it's not going away, it's improving rapidly, and it is going to massively change our digital world within half a decade.

Opinion source: a professional programmer, game developer, and someone that thoroughly despises cryptocurrency