You're absolutely right and I think more people need to understand this. What we now call "AI" refers to a lot of things that are not new and have been happening for decades, just without the complete and callous disregard for humanity that the current AI companies are exemplifying.

The thing is, the things they were doing didn't used to be called AI, nobody pretended machine learning models were intelligent. People really need to start learning more of the terminology around these technologies, because it's important, even if you hate them. You might even learn that you don't have to hate all of them, because they're not all the same. AI is an ugly label being painted onto everything in software nowadays with broad strokes and a lot of it is deserved but there is significant room for nuance here and people should endeavor to have a more nuanced understanding of the topic than they currently do. AI is not LLM which is not GPT which is not computer vision which is not machine learning which is not agentic coding which is not tool usage which is not Generative AI which is not chatbots which is not sentience.

"ALL AI: BAD!" is the logic of a simpleton. Don't be a simpleton. Educate yourself, and begin to understand what about it is bad, because there is plenty about it that is very bad indeed. This technology is going to be transformative whether you love it or hate it. Even if it's 100% terrible (and honestly it's not) you still need to know your enemy. Trying to fight against something you don't understand is the first step to losing.