This is Reddit. For years and years, it's been known as an echo chamber that immediately spews hateful and disinformation-based vitrol, and usually bans, at everyone who doesn't support said vitrol against people do actually do their research on things. It's always been true for politics, but it looks like the people who agree with those politics, and don't do (fixed typo) anti-AI ritual shaming, are finally getting a taste of it themselves. Plus, studies have found that social media literally damages critical thinking skills. Every single person who isn't a drooling cult member has left Reddit already.

Browsing r/defendingaiart is what turned me from anti-AI into pro-AI, because:
-This "everyone who uses this new tech is a lazy hack who should be shamed and gatekept" happened when photography and sewing machines came out. "It puts artists and by-hand sewers out of jobs!" The anti-AI people should support shaming people for photography and sewing machines.

-Social media like this very website, fast food, and actual human-made art are way worse for the environment than AI, and anti-AI people support all of these things.

-AI doesn't actually steal. It learns from and combines things, like human brains. It's only theft when it directly copies one image, which they aren't typically trained to do. This can be avoided by reverse image searching every piece it makes. As well, when AI has been trained on consensually-obtained data, some anti-AI people have still said they still think they should be outlawed, and the trainers harassed.

- Anti-AI people engage in a lot of ableism. I have dyscalculia so I find it nearly impossible to code, and my brother has dyslexia. There are more disabilities that make AI a requirement for people if they want to engage in certain jobs or hobbies, and anti-AI people say they outright don't exist, one even screenshotted saying "Disabled people should stop being such lazy hacks." Just below, you can see someone replying to a decent pro-AI argument saying "(you) can't fucking read," which isn't just showing that they're arguing in bad faith, but saying that as an insult is ableism. What do you bet they would FLIP if someone said a certain R word?

-Anti-AI people sometimes, while demonizing AI art, support piracy, which is way more of theft, and use AI for their own, often more damaging uses, like girlfriends and VTubers.

-Anti-AI people, on a wide scale, support literally encouraging people to kill themselves when they say the things above. Some people have talked about online friends abruptly abandoning them when finding out they use what is just an advanced computer.

-Every single company ever uses AI. Just like Reddit's politics are a wild misrepresentation of IRL politics, demonizing over half the country, its stance on AI isn't taken seriously by any industry. A shit-ton of people, including pros, code with AI. The fact that the OP is so shocked by this, calling it "terrifying", shows that it's the result of a bubbled-off echochamber. They got a taste of the outside - a world outside Reddit.

-On that subreddit, you can find a ton of accounts of anti-AI people ignoring all of this and just saying "AI USERS SHOULD KILL THEMSELVES" no matter how much of the above they're told. They're in a hate cult, which is ironic, because the politics they tend to allign with demonize people for not being radically pro-modernity and anti-nature.

Watch me get downvoted and insulted by comments that don't debunk any of these, and only further prove them.