You’re reading it wrong: rather, AI hype had been common (but not the majority position) in tech contexts for a while, especially from those that have something to sell you.

What you derogatorily call normies are the rest of the world caring about their business until one day some tech wiz came around to say “hey, I have built a machine to replace all of you! Our next goal is to invent something even smarter under our control. Wouldn’t that be neat?” No wonder the average person isn’t really keen on this sort of development.