I think you’ve put your finger on it. This isn’t about AI, it’s about the threat to people’s identity presented by AI. For a while now “writing code” has been a high status profession, with a certain amount of impenetrable mystique that “normies” can’t hurdle. AI has the potential to quite quickly shift “writing code” from a high status profession that people respect to commodity that those same normies can access.
For people whose identities and self of sense have been bolstered by being a member of that high status group AI is a big threat - not because of the impact on their work, but because of the potential to remove their status, and if their status slips away then they may realise they have nothing much else left.
When people feel threatened by new technology they shout loud and proud about how they don’t use it and everything is just fine. Quite often that becomes a new identity. Let them rail and rage against the storm.
“Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!”
The image of Lear “a poor,
infatuated, despised old man” seems curiously apt here.
For people whose identities and self of sense have been bolstered by being a member of that high status group AI is a big threat - not because of the impact on their work, but because of the potential to remove their status, and if their status slips away then they may realise they have nothing much else left.
When people feel threatened by new technology they shout loud and proud about how they don’t use it and everything is just fine. Quite often that becomes a new identity. Let them rail and rage against the storm.
“Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!”
The image of Lear “a poor, infatuated, despised old man” seems curiously apt here.