On the other hand, one could suspect that the last community patch was "the AI overhaul patch", so we may not see additional AI changes in this patch. But we can hope. I agree with the rest you say, I have no interest in the random technology, but apparently a lot of people here are excited about it, so I guess that's good.
It could also be that a small minority of the players find the patch good and talk about it, and the vast majority are pretty much ignoring it as it seems totally incomsequential, or are giving up on the NFP entirely.