AI Hype or Anti-AI Hype?
Conversation around AI has flipped. We’ve gone from AI hype to anti-AI hype in record time. The narrative now is less about what AI can do, and more about mocking those who dare to experiment with it. It’s an odd place to be.
I too have been critical of the blind rush to jump on the AI bandwagon. Adopting any new technology without experimenting deeply, without examining the evidence, is careless. But here’s the problem: most of what we hear against AI today isn’t careful analysis either. It’s the equivalent of hairdresser’s chatter.
Opinions bounce around without much grounding, and the main move seems to be preemptive defensiveness: “And now they’re going to tell me I’m using AI wrong.” It’s as if the debate itself has become a parody, where every argument is a hedge against the next imagined counterargument.
Humans are quick to notice the limits of a technology, but slow to embrace its benefits. We seem almost wired to look for reasons why something won’t work, especially when it threatens not our physical labour but our cognitive territory.
When machines replaced physical effort, we eventually adapted. We learned to drive cars instead of ride horses, to trust industrial processes instead of handcrafting every single item. But when a technology encroaches on thinking, on problem-solving, on what we imagine makes us uniquely human, we resist far harder.
LLMs/AI sit exactly in that uncomfortable space. It’s true that there are better and worse ways to use them. A tool is always just a tool. But these aren’t static tools. They’re evolved, evolving, and adaptive. They demand we learn how to ride them — how to balance, accelerate, and navigate without falling off a cliff. That requires skill, discipline, and yes, some failure along the way. But that’s how progress works.
What strikes me is how often the critics preface their stance with “I’m not a Luddite, but…”. Here’s the thing: if we need to keep insisting we’re not Luddites, we probably sound exactly like them. The reflex is telling.
There may well be another AI winter but these technologies are not going away. They’ve crossed into mainstream use. In the meantime, anyone refusing to engage with them, to adopt and experiment, is handing a clear advantage to competitors who will.
As professional engineers, we have a professional duty to evaluate these tools. It’s part of our craft to understand emerging technologies, to test them, to map out how they can accelerate our work and where their limits lie. Ignoring them out of cynicism, fear, or misplaced pride is not critical thinking. It’s professional negligence.
The conversation about AI should not be reduced to hype versus anti-hype. It should be about practice, evidence, and skill. It’s about how we choose to face change. We can spend our energy mocking early adopters, or we can do the work to learn, adapt, and figure out how to ride the wave without wiping out.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.