[majormajor]

I think ChatGPT's user interface is particularly suited for confusion and debate about that. We've called obviously-more-specifically-purpose-built things "AI" or "enhanced with AI" or such for years, somewhat interchangeably with other terms like "deep learning" or "machine learning." There's that old saw about "it's AI until it works and then it's just an computer science" or somesuch.

And many of those things are worse at their task than a person except for speed and scaling. Can a machine be fooled by dazzle for recognizing a face in a way a human can't? Sure, but nobody is willing to pay for a human to go through everyone's photo albums...

But does ChatGPT "use AI" as a tool in the same sense that Spotify's recommendations "use AI" or is it "an AI" in the sense that it's an independent consciousness/agent?

This is the first time so many people have disagreed on that part. And that skews the debate into "a person is better" vs talking about if a person is even practical in most of the situations we'd use this.