It's the denigration of any and all intellectual pursuits that gets me. It's the myopic lead the blind, in a race to empty their brain fastest before the singularity can rupture them into the mainframe heaven.

Their irl counterparts at the university make me think it must be envy, the same as with AI art: they were never good programmers but have always envied the their prestige; and using this new wonderful machine, they can now live out their fantasy at the expense of others. For others it's just nihilism: why not cheat through your entire higher ed if it's now entirely possible?

But many AI-boosters here on HN were once respected programmers, so what else can it be? Fatigue setting in with age, exacerbated by too many levels of indirection in modern software, AI becoming a crutch to avoid noticing you're slowing down?

As someone said, "Machines were supposed to rid us of tedious work. Instead they write poetry and create art, and we fill captchas to prove to them that we are human"