Getting worse is... well, inaccurate. Fewer slots, sure, but much, much faster slots, and better bifurcation support. It's a bit of a wash, mostly it's just adapting to actual use of the hardware. The current (and likely future) reality is that the vast, vast majority of PCs will never see more than a single AIC at a time, and most of the ones with more than one will have two. Needing more than two, and also needing all of them to have a lot of lanes? That's a tiny, tiny niche. And, of course, most higher end ATX motherboards allow you to split the x16 slot into x8+x8, which might have a ~1-2% performance effect on your GPU, but will solve all your other issues. And, of course, that performance cut isn't even remotely noticeable. The only case in which that isn't a good fix is if you're using one of those passive quad m.2 bifurcation cards, but that already pretty much places you in the "money is not a problem" category. Either way, connectivity in most PCs is more than most enthusiasts need, let alone most users. This doesn't help those in the niches that are getting left out by these developments, but unless we want motherboard/platform costs to skyrocket there isn't much to be done about this.
