The link was made because many early uses of the phrase “it's just autocomplete” were in a context of denying that it's “intelligent” or that it “can think”. This in turn was generally used to downplay the concerns from AI safety experts that it could pose a threat to humankind, especially by pointing at its inability to count r’s in “strawberry” or its failure mode triggered uniquely by asking for a seahorse emoji. Most people don't seem to really grasp what we mean by “misalignment”.
