It's amazing that there are people who still believe in "it's just autocomplete". It hasn't been true for a long time, but currently it's position that reveals complete lack of awareness how good AI has become. It has solved Erdos problem using novel approach. Constant moving of goalpost is recurring theme when discussing AI, but it's really impossible to move it so far that you can frame this achievement as "impressive autocomplete".

I would draw a distinction here. If its a tool (as the GP proposed), it is just fancy auto complete. If it isn't a tool and is instead solving problems in novel ways, inventing new things, etc then it is intelligence and not a tool.

It can't be both in my opinion. To be a tool it needs to be controllable and predictable, intelligences are neither. See humans, and really all living things, for plenty of examples where they can't be completely controlled or predicted.