When I was doing my applied math PhD, the vast majority of people in my discipline used either “machine learning”, “statistical learning”, “deep learning”, but almost never “AI” (at least not in a paper or a conference). Once I finished my PhD and took on my first quant job at a bank, management insisted that I should use the word AI more in my communications. I make a neural network that simply interpolates between prices? That’s AI.

The point is that top management and shareholders don’t want the accurate terminology, they want to hear that you’re implementing AI and that the company is investing in it, because that’s what pumps the company’s stock as long as we’re in the current AI bubble.