People typically do not approach existential uncertainties with such intrepidness. I think this is the case for most people who hate AI. This article glosses over that.
I suppose I am one of the people who could technically be lumped into the "hate AI" category, and yet I find myself incredibly comfortable with the uncertainty around where things are going. Perhaps it's because, as I previously mentioned, I have always enjoyed the feeling of uncertainty (and I recognize that's not the norm for most), but it's also because the entire thing feels so hyperbolic from all angles that I can't help but assume that whatever happens will be somewhere "in the middle" of all the rhetoric everyone's spouting from everywhere.
I also have a very, "The world's gonna do what the world's gonna do, the best I can do is find my path through and flow with it," attitude about, well... most things. Maybe that helps? Maybe I'm talking out of my ass rn? I'm unsure! :)
No, I think that you're on to something and I wish you kept the original version of this part of your comment (yes I caught your edit and have it on my clipboard still!) because it touched on what I think about the whole "existential" bit of my own comment a bit more direct (but I think your edit expresses your attitude more sophisticatedly).
Few people have anything that comes anywhere near any sort of philosophical foundation that they can rely on to weather their anxieties. If anything they only strengthen their sensibility to express—and compound—their worries.
I would be the same way if either: I didn't have dependents and heavy responsibilities, or: I had enough in savings to last a few years without income. I'm fascinated to see where software engineering is going to go, but I can't be comfortable about a threat to my ability to pay my mortgage and give my family a decent life.
Truly such a first-order Markov chain would not be a threat but it turns out that they have built a program that guesses the next word based on the last few hundred thousand and it turns out that it works pretty well for writing software.
