Personally, I find AI too much of a "fuzzy black box" thing to be really interested in it. I have to agree that the applications are often truly marvelous. But the fact that, for example, training neural nets is often more of an art than a science is holding me back to step into the field.
I like to work on a problem, think it through, and be 99% sure that it will work before I have even written one line of code. With AI, it is more like "let's try this and see if it works".
That's because artificial intelligence is subject to eternally moving goalposts. Any technology which we are fully able to understand ceases to be intelligent; it is relegated to the status of mere "algorithm".
Lastly, such things are difficult to market and we weren't ready financially to take on such risks.
[0] - http://blog.chewxy.com/2014/04/08/eyetracking-jetpack-joyrid...
Might it be that sensors and processing power are still not quite there? I've just seen a Project Tango video (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9634317) and it seems to suggest that.
BUT there are so much people focusing on these things that on one hand I feel that great things will come very soon (Oculus, etc.), but on the other hand, it's just a very risky move. The market is not yet created, everything is just a demo.
The other day here in HN someone commented something similar here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627754
There is a huge risk in creating a cohesive value proposition for a big mass of people. Be reckless and you could flop like Google Glass. But once someone does that successfully, a huge market for entertainment will have just open. So my idea is to just toy with these things and gain knowledge and proficiency, but don't jump into it full time just yet. Do you think this is an intelligent (non-)move? Or just fear of the unknown? The thing is, I would also not want to move just for Fear Of Missing Out!