Artificial. General. Intelligence.

The term, as originally defined, is for programs which are man-made (Artificial), able to efficiently solve problems (Intelligence), including novel problem domains outside those considered in its creation (General). Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. That’s literally all AGI means, and ChatGPT absolutely fits the bill.

What you describe is ASI, or artificial super intelligence. In the late 90’s, 00’s, and early 10’s, a weird subgroup of AI nerds got it into their head that merely making an AGI (even a primitive one) would cause a self-recursion improvement loop and create ASI in short order. They then started saying “achieve AGI” as a stand in for “emergence of ASI” as the two were intricately linked in their mind.

In reality the whole notion of AGI->ASI auto-FOOM has been experimentally discredited, but the confusion over terminology remains.

Furthermore, the very idea of ASI can’t be taken for granted. A machine that trivially solves humanity’s pressing problems makes nice sci-fi, but there is absolutely no evidence to presume such a machine could actually exist.

In Terminator 1 Skynet looses because John Conner taught people how to fight the machines, but John Conner only knows this because Kyle Reese taught Sarah Conner how to fight the machines and she taught John Conner. But Kyle Reese only knows this because he was taught by John Conner- so there's no actual source of the information on how to fight the machines, it's a loop with no beginning or end.

I had a philosophy teacher who said this is evidence of divine intervention to destroy Skynet, essentially God told people through John Conner how to win, but a cut scene in Terminator 1 implies Skynet was also created by reverse engineering the chip in the destroyed Terminator- implying there's also no origin of the information on how to create Skynet and it's also an infinite loop.