He likely is, and yes much of today's AI is hyped bullshit. Neural network recognition is a hammer, and because they think they know how to do it, they consider everything as hammer fodder including screws and plumbing. To build true minds is like building a full house with all the technologies that go into it; it's much more complex and it needs a lot of different tools.

The AI wunderkinds are flashy strutters but it's hollow under the shell. This kid managed to sell a very limited technology implementation and to me it looks like he had inside help getting the money for yet another scam. It feels just like Zuck and Facebook, which was set up to track the population. Here, it was a scheme to suck money out of the military, drawn from taxpayers with no say-so.