I guess I kinda get why people hate AI

AI Marketing, Hype, and “Safety” Rhetoric

• Many comments argue that doom-y job-loss talk is marketing—but aimed at CEOs and investors, not users: “invest or be left behind.”
• “Safety” and x-risk messaging is seen as a way to lobby for regulation that locks in big players’ moats (“only we can be trusted with this tech”).
• Some see genuine concern; others view it as classic FOMO + fear-mongering to sustain an arms-race narrative (including with China).

Practical Impact on Development Work

• Broad agreement that LLMs help with boilerplate, examples, and small coding tasks; most devs’ real opinions lie between “useless” and “devs obsolete.”
• Repeated stories of AI-driven projects failing when people “vibe code” whole systems or promise rewrites of massive legacy stacks in months.
• Some report big productivity boosts on localized tasks; others report slow, bloated, or subtly broken AI code that causes emergencies later.
• Code review congestion with long, low-quality AI PRs is cited as a real cost; sustainable, fully automated maintenance is said to be absent so far.

Jobs, Power, and Corporate Behavior

• Many see AI messaging being used to intimidate workers (“10x faster with AI or your job is at risk”) and justify layoffs that would’ve happened anyway.
• Entry-level/junior roles and routine white-collar work (especially copywriting and offshore BPO) are seen as most vulnerable.
• There’s skepticism about long-term scenarios where AI kills most jobs: who buys products if consumers lack income? Yet some expect massive white-collar losses in the next downturn.
• Several argue the real issue isn’t just jobs but increasing inequality, “whale hunting” (selling to big firms/governments), and erosion of economic relevance for ordinary people.

Arms Race, Military, and Control

• A subset views AI primarily as military/geo­political tech: an “AI Manhattan Project” where pausing is seen as unilateral disarmament.
• Others counter that its real endgame is domestic population control and surveillance, not just interstate conflict.

Culture, Trust, and Everyday Life

• Many say people hate AI less for job risk and more for: spam, slop, fakery, plagiarism, and undermining visible effort and learning.
• Concerns include enshittification of software (shipping more low-quality features faster), weakened thinking, and a breakdown in shared reality.
• Debate over anthropomorphizing LLMs: some thank them to maintain their own civility; others find that emotionally confusing or unnecessary.

Bubble or Transformation?

• One camp sees “AI will kill 50% of white-collar jobs” as late-stage bubble rhetoric, akin to web3/NFTs or Theranos, with ROI still unproven at scale.
• Another insists recent model improvements (especially in reasoning/code) are “staggering” and that broad adoption of coding agents is inevitable.
• Timeline and magnitude of impact are widely disputed; whether this is a transient bubble or a true paradigm shift is considered unresolved.