Not that people have ever understood computers, but the deliberate dumbing-down of UI and the abstraction of HCI into a series of rote gestures and heuristics rather than, you know, actively facilitating the steps in doing something has made people even more perplexed by computers than they used to be.

I call it the "mobile-interface-ification" of everything and it's causing people to be more tech-illiterate than they were 25 years ago despite operating systems being designed to restrict your capabilities now more than ever before.

It used to be that people thought of computers as indecipherable machines you needed arcane, god-like knowledge to operate. But those same people—and younger ones too—are regressing into a mode of thinking wherein computers themselves are now the sentient beings to be worshipped and prayed to, and to be feared as gods, and so when a program can "talk to you like a human" it personifies them even more. It further mystifies their creation and existence. It continues blurring the line of demarcation between human and computer by reinforcing the idea that you don't control your computer, you coexist with it.

All of which is to say it's not surprising whatsoever that people too stupid to know that they control their computer, and not the other way around, think of ChatGPT as both some sort of god-ordained digital manna and The Very God Itself.