> became the unquestioned authority on any given topic, but the same is true of human pundits and professors alike.

There is no other system capable of such a thing like AI. Every other system we have is dependent on humans and the trust between humans and their biases. Humans actually seek information from other humans based solely on the commonality of their shared biases. Once you remove the human element, the system just "is". And such a system will be indistinguishable from magic or "the Gods".