Imagine being in a self-own competition and you’re up against ben shapiro and this guy

As usual, when people say "AI" in these threads they are talking about variations exclusively on the current iteration of LLMs.

Chess engines that use machine learning (AI) are the best of the best (stockfish, lela etc.)

Similarly, there are plenty of excellent coding tools that use machine learning.

LLMs also use machine learning, but they use it in a different way.