It's not "sloppy use of words", both the term and the practice of AI have been around for far longer than today's probabilistic models. In particular, decision trees and similar are some of the simplest forms of AI.
The difference between an AI and a "regular" bunch of if/else statements is, in my opinion, the ease of adding new rules to the system. That's why something like Prolog counts as AI.
With a technical audience, it is better to use actual terminology.
However the general public does not have the knowledge to understand these. These are the people using ChatGPT and for them it is AI. We can correct them, but it's likely they won't care.
The general public is being misled with overwrought appeals to emotion and misused terms applied in a deliberately overbroad manner. AI may contain algorithms but an algorithm is not AI.
Social media feed algorithms are bad, and the public is awakening to the damage they cause. But they are not AI. As Yan LeCun pointed out recently, AI is actually the solution to the problems created by "algorithms."
