I've come to the same conclusion. "AI" was just the marketing term for a large language model in the form of a chatbot, which harkened to sci-fi characters like Data or GLaDOS. It can look impressive, it can often give correct answers, but it's just a bunch of next word predictions stacked on top of each other. The word "AI" has deviated so much from this older meaning that a second acronym, "AGI", had to be created to represent what "AI" once did.
The new "reasoning" or "chain of thought" AIs are similarly just a bunch of conventional LLM inputs and outputs stacked on top of each other. I agree with the GP that it feels a bit magical at first, but the opportunity to run a DeepSeek distillation on my PC - where each step of the process is visible - removed quite a bit of the magic behind the curtain.
The new "reasoning" or "chain of thought" AIs are similarly just a bunch of conventional LLM inputs and outputs stacked on top of each other. I agree with the GP that it feels a bit magical at first, but the opportunity to run a DeepSeek distillation on my PC - where each step of the process is visible - removed quite a bit of the magic behind the curtain.