Different sets of people, and different audiences. The CEO / corporate executive crowd loves AI. Why? Because they can use it to replace workers. The general public / ordinary employee crowd hates AI. Why? Because they are the ones being replaced.
The startups, founders, VCs, executives, employees, etc. crowing about how they love AI are pandering to the first group of people, because they are the ones who hold budgets that they can direct toward AI tools.
This is also why people might want to remain anonymous when doing an AI experiment. This lets them crow about it in private to an audience of founders, executives, VCs, etc. who might open their wallets, while protecting themselves from reputational damage amongst the general public.
I have been in dozens of meetings over the past year where directors have told me to use AI to enable us to fire 100% of our contract staff.
I have been in meetings where my director has said that AI will enable us to shrink the team by 50%.
Every single one of my friends who do knowledge work has been told that AI is likely to make their job obsolete in the next few years, often by their bosses.
You don' have to look past this very forum, most people here seem to be very positive about gen AI, when it comes to software development specifically.
Lots of folk here will happily tell you about how LLMs made them 10x more productive, and then their custom agent orchestrator made them 20x more productive on top of that (stacking multiplicatively of course, for a total of 200x productivity gain).
I don't know what is your bubble, but I'm a regular programmer and I'm absolutely excited even if a little uncomfortable. I know a lot of people who are the same.
I am using AI a lot to do tasks that just would not get done because they would take too long. Also, getting it to iterate on a React web application meant I can think about what I want it to do rather than worry about all the typing I would have to do. Especially powerful when moving things around, hand-written code has a "mental load" to move that telling an AI to do it does not.
Obviously not everything is 100% but this is the most productive I have felt for a very long time. And I've been in the game for 25 years.
I mean there are two different things. One is whether there are actual productivity boosts right now. And the second is the excitement about the technology.
I am definitely more productive. A lot of this productivity is wasted on stuff I probably shouldn't be writing anyways. But since using coding agent, I'm both more productive at my day job and I'm building so many small hobby projects that I would have never found time for otherwise.
But the main topic of discussion in this thread is the excitement about technology. And I have a bit mixed feelings, because on one hand side I feel like a turkey being excited for the Thanksgiving. On the other hand, I think the programming future is bright. there will be so much more software build and for a lot of that you will still need programmers.
My excitement comes from the fact that I can do so much more things that I wouldn't even think about being able to do a few months ago.
Just as an example, in last month I have used the agents to add features to the applications I'm using daily. Text editor, podcast application, Android keyboard. The agents were capable to fork, build, and implement a feature I asked for in a project where I have no idea about the technology. Iif I were hired to do those features, I would be happy if I implemented them after two weeks on the job. With an agent, I get tailor made features in half of a morning. Spending less than ten minutes prompting.
I am building educational games for my kids.
They learn a new topic at school? Let me quickly vibe the game to make learning it fun. A project that wouldn't be worth my weekend, but is worth 15 minutes. https://kuboble.com/math/games/snake/index.html?mode=multipl...
So I'm excited because I think coding agents will be for coding what pencil and paper were for writing.
I feel like it depends on the platform and your location.
An anonomyous platform like Reddit and even HN to a certain extent has issues with bad faith commenters on both sides targeting someone they do not like. Furthermore, the MJ Rathburn fiasco itself highlights how easy it is to push divisive discourse at scale. The reality is trolls will troll for the sake of trolling.
Additionally, "AI" has become a political football now that the 2026 Primary season is kicking off, and given how competitive the 2026 election is expected to be and how political violence has become increasingly normalized in American discourse, it is easy for a nut to spiral.
I've seen less issues when tying these opinions with one's real world identity, becuase one has less incentive to be a dick due to social pressure.
That’s a big reason I am open about my identity, here (and elsewhere, but I’m really only active, hereabouts).
At one time, I was an actual troll. I said bad stuff, and my inner child was Bart Simpson. I feel as if I need to atone for that behavior.
I do believe that removing consequences, almost invariably brings out the worst in people. I will bet that people are frantically creating trollbots. Some, for political or combative purposes, but also, quite a few, for the lulz.
There is a massive difference between saying "I use AI" and what the author of this bot is doing. I personally talk very little about the topic because I have seen some pretty extreme responses.
Some people may want to publicly state "I use AI!" or whatever. It should be unsurprising that some people do not want to be open about it.
The more straightforward explanation for the original OP's question is that they realized what they were doing was reckless and given enough time was likely to blow up in their face.
They didn't hide because of a vague fear of being associated with AI generally (which there is no shortage of currently online), but to this specific, irresponsible manifestation of AI they imposed on an unwilling audience as an experiment.
I personally know some of those people. They are basically being forced by their employers to post those things. Additionally, there is a ton of money promoting AI. However, in private those same people say that AI doesn't help them at all and in fact makes their work harder and slower.
You are assuming people are acting in good faith. This is a mistake in this era. Too many people took advantage of the good faith of others lately and that has produced a society with very little public trust left.
I mean, this is very obviously false. Literally everyone is not. Some people are, some people are absolutely condemning the use, some people use it just a bit, etc.
Anti-AI people are treated in a condescending way all the time. Then there is Suchir Balaij.
Since we are in a Matplotlib thread: People on the NumPy mailing list that are anti-AI are actively bullied and belittled while high ranking officials in the Python industrial complex are frolicking at AI conferences in India.
The startups, founders, VCs, executives, employees, etc. crowing about how they love AI are pandering to the first group of people, because they are the ones who hold budgets that they can direct toward AI tools.
This is also why people might want to remain anonymous when doing an AI experiment. This lets them crow about it in private to an audience of founders, executives, VCs, etc. who might open their wallets, while protecting themselves from reputational damage amongst the general public.