[unwaba]

> Can intelligence even be artificial?

Well, yes. "Artificial" first and foremost means "man-made". The point of terming intelligence as artificial is to explicitly differentiate between the intelligence/cognitive modules developed over millennia of natural evolution and, well, man-made attempts at mimicking this.

Moreover, as another comment mentions, ML is a subset of AI.

The term "Artificial intelligence" is not what drives people up a wall. It's actually the fact that it is _sold_ as capable of more than reality is what angers people.