There was no technical link -- neural nets were still unpopular (largely, if unfairly, as a result of the '67 Perceptrons book0 and most work was on symbolic systems and, in the later period, expert systems. but what passed for AI systems at the time were quite powerful, if limited, just as what are called AI systems today are quite powerful, if limited.

"Unfair" in that the book wasn't intended to destroy work on NNs, but was used to justify abandoning the field of work, until multilayer networks (discussed Perceptrons) were re"discovered" in the 90s.