I quite often discuss AI with non technical fellows that just heard about it in the media, and I generally try to convince them that the 'AI' term is indeed conveying the wrong message.

I stress that we are currently dealing with highly sophisticated automated mechanisms, that are carefully designed to effectively carry super specific tasks.

The myth of skynet or HAL is still quite present, and I think most people fail to realize that many of the advancements in machine learning applications are quite not related to these.