Fair take.
My take is that fusion, quantum, gene editing, etc., these are in the category of "all hype and bullshit--until they aren’t".
AI is in the same category, just further along. It was all hype and bullshit, I remember very clearly. And now it isn’t.
Sometimes such things can be in “all hype and bullshit” status for decades and decades--until suddenly they aren’t. Case in point is CRISPR, this sort of gene editing was “around the corner” for decades, and everyone got tired of the hype, all the bullshit--until suddenly one day we were actually around that corner and it wasn’t bullshit anymore. I suspect the same will be true for fusion, my bet would be on the plasma controlled with AI stellarator path.
Everyone is just making best-guess predictions, any of which can be shattered the next morning by the results of a new experiment.