I don't think his point is unreasonable. There's a difference between an AI being able to figure things out for itself and an AI pulling known information from its database, and we should be clear on that distinction. That's not to say that an AI being able to store and retrieve information and communicate it in different ways isn't useful or impressive, but it's not the same as one that can truly piece together ideas in novel and complex ways and come to its own conclusions. They're both AI, but the implications of the latter would be far more significant.