I was just joining the workforce at that time, so I was unaware of any hype. From my perspective, cloud computing was just "there". Was the hype really comparable to today?

I think it does. Startups, VCs and media still provoke hype trains. People cherry pick and extrapolate everything in AI as well.

Except the benefits of LLM adoption can be measured empirically, with your own eyes. And don't require network effects to fully realise benefits, unlike cryptocurrency and NFTs. Ignoring the hype and doing your own thing with it is a good choice.

I agree to some level, but crypto and NFTs also have value without network effects present.

You could even argue that without network effects AI is also very limited: way less users -> way worse models. It took OpenAI to commit capital first to pull this off.

The point is I think comparing these areas (and other tech) is still interesting and worthy.