I have heard this changes everything about fifteen technologies in my career and I want to know why AI is supposed to be different

I am 52. I worked through the dot-com boom, the mobile revolution, the cloud transition, big data, blockchain. Each one was going to change everything. Some did change a lot. None changed everything. Most of the breathless predictions were wrong in the specifics even when the general direction was right.

Now I am hearing the same language about AI, the most transformative technology in human history, nothing will be the same, civilisation-level change. I have learned to be sceptical of that framing.

What I want is a specific, honest argument for why this technology is categorically different from previous platform shifts, not in degree but in kind. Not "it is faster" or "it is more capable." Why is this one supposed to break the pattern where the hype was always larger than the reality?