Yeah.. but the machine learning is only just getting useful so you're kind of projecting the limitations of a new tech long term as if the tech won't be changing and it probably will change and it probably will be able to go well beyond just combining pre-made content.

That being said all human knowledge is plagiarized from the past, that's the inante foundational kind of process of science and knowledge. We aren't all supposed to figure everything out on our own so much as steal the success of the past as fast as possible and apply it somehow. You're not suppose to re-invent the wheel, you're supposed to copy it and find smart uses for it.

Sometimes 'acquiring knowledge' just means organizing the data so you see the patterns, in fact I'd say the majority of the time. AI is going to be pretty darn good at that and the limits we see now are rather expected vs you should project today's limitations decades into the future as if the tech will be standing still. People do that far too often, they speculate all the negatives and almost gleefully ignore the positives. It skews humans ability to long term project quite a lot.