In the general population, there would be a very satisfying schadenfreude in watching the techies make themselves unemployed by their own hubris. I think that's part of the desire for the story to be true.
The other part is that those selling AI want to believe it is as big as the introduction of the internet, and not just another hype train like blockchain.
Any evidence that makes the current hotness seem like a tectonic shift is attractive to those types.
As a developer I've tried to use Copilot and ChatGPT as much as I can to improve my performance, but even with GPT4 I've found that for my workflow the most of the leverage it gives falls into:
* Scaffolding of projects like unit tests or basic wireframes,
* writing or proofreading e-mail
* understanding cryptic legacy code that uses old practices
* saving me having to visit some framework documentation.
But I found it hard to believe it's the reason behind layoffs, as the ceiling of their capabilities it's pretty low when things get complex, and even in some cases can have diminishing or negative returns. Examples of this are hallucinations of APIs or code that is not compatible with the language I'm using. So it becomes like a slot machine, hoping that the next prompt will have a good result.
I think the main advantage of the current iteration of AI, it's like having the old Google back, before SEO and paid articles contaminated the web with useless first results.
The other part is that those selling AI want to believe it is as big as the introduction of the internet, and not just another hype train like blockchain. Any evidence that makes the current hotness seem like a tectonic shift is attractive to those types.