Technologies are invented for a reason. Usually that reason has more to do with the inventor's personal situation than with the technology's ultimate use. As a result, technologies evolve after they leave the laboratory. As time passes, many innovative practitioners attempt to use the same basic technology to do all sorts of things that were never envisioned or intended. Occasionally, someone may even find an incredibly successful application for the new technology, one that satisfies some fundamental human need.
Technologies evolve toward human needs.
The hope of the inventors was to demonstrate, especially to those always-fickle funding agencies, that AI was possible and practical and that thinking about thinking machines was scientifically sound. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Also, they failed. But, as inventors often do, they failed to find or create a market demand for the technology sufficient to make their start-up companies successful. However, the new technology, if it survives, takes its own course.