I guess taking a mostly integrated-systems, applications-focused view, I see AI as a useful organizing concept for what to build, what the issues are in building it, etc. For example, I'm not sure what field Alan Newell's "knowledge level" talk would go in if not into AI.

I do agree there are lots of areas of research that are maybe more "algorithms" than "AI" (e.g. improving SAT-solving), but I disagree that that sort of specialization is the only way to research. From my perspective, those areas of algorithms provide the raw-material research that can be used to build AI systems. Even building AI systems is often specialized to some extent as well, but I think it's useful to have a semi-coherent body of knowledge and shared community around "AI" when doing so, rather than just the domain-specific algorithms and approaches.