For non-technical people, terms like Machine Learning, Algorithm, Automation, AI, Neural Networks and 'Magical Powers' are synonymous.. Journalists, marketing teams, and executives choose whichever term generates the most hype and clicks.

I like to describe my job as a software engineer as "wizardry" to people. With the way LLMs are writing code, it's only getting closer to writing actual spells.

> "Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic."

— Thomas Szasz

"Like a magic crystal mirror, My computer lets me know Of the other world within it Where my body cannot go / The computer is a gateway To a world where magic rules Where the only law is logic Webs of words the only tools" https://mindstalk.net/filk/world.html

My understanding is that the original use of AI was to describe algorithms that solved complicated problems, but only sometimes, and usually through heuristics. As opposed to provably correct algorithms like Dijkstra's.

I think that's how we still use it.