[Mordisquitos]

> IMO it's not that dissimilar from climate science or even in the extreme the existence of aliens.

Those may be similar to the contrasting attitudes regarding AI, but the analogy I first thought of for what you describe is the topic of cryptocurrency.

1. On the one hand, most people who have deep knowledge and experience of software development and databases, or professional experience of financial markets and banking, tend to be extremely sceptical, critical, or outright dismissive of the whole idea of cryptocurrency.

2. On the other, people who are technology "enthusiasts" and have some limited or self-taught programming skills, or those who have some moderate knowledge of the basics of finance and investments (often motivated by personal ambition), are much more likely to be cryptocurrency fan-boys.

[Karrot_Kream]

This is just the hype cycle in action. New technology comes out and its fanboys and shallower (from a usecase perspective) users are adamant it'll change everything everywhere. Deep practitioners understand limitations because they're involved in the work. Eventually the fanboys are proved wrong or gravitate to the next hype and everyone else finds the place for a new technology.

A good example is Go some years ago and these days Rust. But it's the same thing, just the hype cycle at work.