Is this a case of people saying one thing and doing another?? Everyone's experience is different, but to me it seems most people love AI?! I see reports in the news about people not being able to do anything anymore without asking AI first, people dating AI boy/girlfriends, students using AI to do homework, teachers using AI to catch AI cheating by students, people writing emails via AI, improving their own writing with AI... and so many more! I personally use it a lot for coding (though I still try to do some manual work so I don't just forget everything), translations, quick queries about things, in the computer (specially CLI commands, AI is just incredibly good at it - no matter the CLI, seemingly) and in the physical world (e.g. what's the name of that thing you turn on a tap to open it - English is not my first language), it even helped me a lot figure out legislation in two different countries, where finding and understanding the law was next to impossible by myself (and it gave me links to everything so I could check by myself).
If you and 5 others go to McDonald's for 3 meals a day, it will always appear busy to you even if it had no traffic outside those moments you were there with the 5 others. Similarly the news can report on outliers using AI while most people you know IRL may not use it. In other words, it is accurate, the groups are not the same, and statistics often don't feel like they reflect reality.
Humans are complex. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume there are a lot of people who both rely on and don't like the idea of AI. People can need a car to get around and also be worried about the effects of car emissions. People can dislike cigarettes and be smokers.
I keep seeing this argument in various places on HN that usage implies a positive opinion, when it very much does not. AI has put most people in prisoner's dilemma, and in prisoner's dilemma you can simultaneously play the game and hate the game. To go through a few of your examples:
> Students using AI to do homework
Either you don't use AI, where you have to spend a lot of time studying or graduate bottom of your class, or you do and get on with your life. You can acknowledge that the studying is the valuable part (most students do in my experience) yet skip it for whatever reason (procrastination / life issues / etc).
> Teachers using AI to catch AI cheating by students
We've added an extra step to their already overloaded schedules. If they don't do this they're basically encouraging students to cheat this way.
> Translations
You can now easily get a translation with much better accuracy than before (presumably, I'm a monolingual English speaker), but now you aren't talking to any other human beings for this information. This goes for a lot of other knowledge-value work / hobbies too where asking questions is valuable.
Most people I've spoken to in private hate AI in tech too, they just keep quiet out of fear for their job (voice any objection to AI? next on the chopping block), so you only hear the pro AI voices.
I don't work in tech (school teacher), so the main way I interact with tech people is online.
IME, everyone I meet offline has some low-level caution about AI taking their job, but uses AI and is amazed by their capabilities and is glad for this tool.
Most ppl I meet online are strong anti-AI advocates.