Although I may sound a bit salty here, something which should also mentioned is that catastrophic crypto currency hype which made buying graphics card a gamble several times for a longer period some years ago.

As someone who tried to get into VR (and got a VR headset for a good price) it was kinda stupid not to get a graphics card being able to run said VR headset.

Though, all that said, it makes me wonder if that crypto craze stifled any faster AI development back then, given graphics cards were so paramount for AI as NVIDIA says.