Large corporation definitely could do better when it comes to explaining the limits of their AI/ML technologies and putting those technologies in perspective (especially historic perspective). Scaling down on hyperbole, buzzwords and personification would help as well.
AI is not some magical ineffable thing that will someday appear out of nowhere. It's the name we give to the gradual progression of our efforts to build machines to perform cognitive tasks. Someone from the pre-computer age would have had no problem recognizing even the ENIAC as intelligent, in a limited sense; it could solve problems that were previously too hard even for the smartest human mathematicians. As someone who actually does AI research on a daily basis, I have no problem with granting intelligence to even very basic chatbots. That goes hand in hand with recognizing that there are many kinds and levels of intelligence, and plenty of opportunity to build smarter and more flexible systems.
* Viruses would probably be a more apt analogy.
Pedantically yes, you are taking inputs into a black box and recieving output.
This level of reductionist thinking actually hampers progress in AI, because you're stuck on Chinese room. I mean seriously, they already had this discussion like 20 years ago "fam".
Yeah, you are right. It's some progress.
* For the record, we don't even know if it even possible to make transistors in this hypothetical universe of AI.
The general public does not set budgets for AI research.
AI research benefits from faster processors, more memory and more advanced algorithms. Only philosophers (the domain of AGI is philosophy, not so much engineering or maths) are uncomfortable with those details.
Please refer to AGI, if you are talking of the hypothetical strong AI. The current textbook definition is alright.
(And yeah, the hype around AI is palpable and annoying. That's why many researchers called their work "cognitive science", "machine learning", "optimization", "logic" or "applied maths" and avoided "AI". Because else, they'd have to argue semantics, or defend why they haven't build an artificial God yet...)