There is rarely a constructive discussion around the term “AI”. You can’t say anything useful about what it might lead to or how useful it might be, because it is purely a marketing term that does not have a specific meaning (neither do both of the words in its abbreviation).

Interesting discussions tend to avoid “AI” in favour of specific terms such as “ML”, “LLM”, “GAN”, “stable diffusion”, “chatbot”, “image generation”. These terms refer to specific tech and applications of that tech, and allow to argue about specific consequences for sciences or society (use of ML in biotech vs. proliferation of chatbots).

However, certain sub-industries prefer “AI” precisely because it’s so vague, offers seemingly unlimited potential (please give us more investment money/stonks go up), and creates a certain vibe of a conscious being useful when pretending not to be working around IP laws and creating tools based on data obtained without relevant licensing agreements (cf. the countless “if humans have the freedom to read, therefore it’s unfair to restrict the uses of a software tool” fallacies, often perpetuated even by seemingly technically literate people, in pretty much every relevant forum thread).