The AI term has been coopted by Hollywood notions of synthetic human-level intelligence but it really is just referring to the academic discipline which Random Forests definitely falls under and has for decades.
We've also been using the term Machine Learning for a long time to try to avoid this. Using "AI" where "ML" would suffice is just trying to cash in on recent hype for clicks.
My understanding is "ML" came into existence after the term "AI" became an untouchable and disrespectful dirty word in academia after a previous hype cycle went bust. Statisticians wouldn't be caught dead working on "AI". See also xkcd purity scale (435).
Not really though it may seem that way. Not all AI is ML. There are a ton of things within AI such as planning algorithms or Expert Systems. Again those are under the academic discipline of AI but not in the subfield of ML.
Yes I agree, but OP's link is not aimed at academics, it's aimed at the general public. And you can't expect the general public to know that distinction: they see 'AI', they think 'ChatGPT', not Random Forests
