It's not false that we are closer to strong "conversational" AI than ever before.  Still, in practical terms, we're pretty far away from not needing to program anymore.  I find that articles like this are more fantastical than informative.  I guess it is interesting to think about where we'll be when we can have an abstract conversation with a computer system rather than the rigid specifics of programming, but I'm with Brian -- this seems to be a cycle.  Though, I'd say the media does boom and bust, but the research carries on relatively consistently since AI researchers are usually less interested in the hype. 

In the ORES project, we're using the most simplistic "AIs" available -- classifiers.  Still these dumb AIs can still help us to do amazing things (e.g. review all of RecentChanges in 50x faster or augment article histories with information about the *type of change* made).  IMO, it's these amazing and powerful things that dumb, non-conversational AIs can do that is very powerful and a little scary.  We're hardly taking advantage of that at all.  I think that's where the next big revolution with AI is taking place right now.  It's going to change a lot of things and infect many aspects of our life (and in many ways it already has).   

-Aaron