The way I explain it to my students is through a venn diagram of "Traditional AI", "Machine Learning", and "Data Science" (though I suppose Gen AI is starting to form another circle). A* falls into the "Traditional AI" space, which is a mixed of state searching, logic representation, and statistics/probability (now called data science). What general public considers "AI" is where all the circles meet, and it means everything from Robots to if-else statements.