There is code behind the scenes, but the training data is separate to the code. The training data is going to be scrapped from the web and it's going to be biased towards whatever is common on the Internet, the 'schoolboys' writing the code aren't exactly responsible for that, blame the media and what it influences mainly.
You know, the gap between someone being sarcastic and the person that doesn't get it.
With all that said I am very disappointed that the sum total of human achievement for the last few millenia has come down to coding and training and recoding and retraining lumps of silicon to deliver half baked results that *still* have to be verified and are therefore not worth the power it takes to run them...
Like a lot of technology it depends on what you do with it. A train can carry your stuff more effectively than a mule. You can use it to carry materials to build a university, or raw ingredients for a new drug that you can manufacture at scale, and that's probably a good thing. You can use it to carry weapons for a war that doesn't need to happen, or cattle from an increasingly-industrialized food supply, and that's a bad thing. You can maintain it poorly and spill toxic chemicals. Up to you.
Well, that's a pretty silly statement. Saying it's impossible for this technology to be useful or a good thing, is just silly as if someone else said it's inevitable that it'll be a good thing.
The chicken pox vaccine didn't solve war in the middle east, but I'd still argue that it's clearly good that it happened. Same for AI; it can be good without needing to clear this insanely high bar you seem to feel is necessary for it to prove its usefulness.
For what it's worth, though, the part I'll agree with you on is that people will misuse the technology in ways to scam others out of money, or to make the world a worse place, maybe so much so that it eclipses any good that comes out of it. I'm just saying that's a choice they're making, not something inherent in the technology itself.
i have found some interesting uses, someone at work gets it to summarise meeting minutes, pretty good at it too, but you MUST review it, and ensure that it capture everything as well as the right conclusions.
I do think that it can make us lazy, and we will start to get worse at a lot of stuff.
It is prone to biases and misunderstanding, just like a person. it will be an interesting trip up the hype curve!