One of the reasons they are hyping up AI, is that it can be quite a convenient way of control.
In the past rulers did this through religion, where they claimed they need to do this or that because it's the "Will of God", now they are pushing for "experts", humanitarians reasons etc..
But later it will really come in handy to say: we need you to cut your emissions from consuming meat, heating your house etc... because ... AI said so! And as they drill in people's mind's that AI can't be wrong since they will falsely claim it's smarter than all humans combined they will away with justifying whatever they want.
AI is basically just a control mechanism. Kevin McCall has an interesting short post on it as well: https://nolongerreading.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-real-ai-agenda.html
In the end it's just one of their tools, like all technology it's a force augmenter.
But so far it seems not as many as they would like to are jumping onto the VR/NFT Meta bandwagon.