Are we sure things like biology, or heck, even the universe as a whole and its parts, aren't "glorified x thing"? Can't we apply this argument to just about anything?
As for the prompt(s), to use such a limiting term, they could as well come from a self-reinforcing loop that starts when we're born and is influenced by external stimuli.
I could be wildly off base, but seeing many of the (often heated) arguments made about what AI is or isn't or should or could be, it makes me wonder.
Although we're certainly making a lot of progress on other aspects of intelligence.
And then there's all the talk of a singularity in innovation or progress that to me betrays a lack of understanding of what the word singularity means, and a lack of understanding of the limits of knowledge and progress.
It seems to me that on one extreme there are people easily anthropomorphising advanced computing and on the other extreme there are people trivializing it with sentences like "glorified x thing". This time around it's "glorified autocorrect" and its derivations. It's always something that glorifies another artificial thing, and I suspect that if and when we will have recreated the human brain, or heck, another human, it will still be a "glorified x thing".
As 0x0203 said, maybe it is to be ascribed to the religious substrate that takes offence at anything that arrogantly tries to resemble the living creatures made by God, or God himself.