Isn't this basically what was happening with most of our personal projects coming from ideas that we found very interesting and then forget that we ever thought about it?

Honestly, at least 50% of it is natural. Personally I don't use AI, but its emergence was highly eye-opening for me.

I personally like both the process and the result in software development. Painstakingly designing things, writing them, and seeing that everything is working as it should be very smoothly, efficiently and fast. It's like building an engine by hand, tuning it, listening and feeling that it works as its best version within your capabilities. Then taking notes of the noises and inefficiencies and iterating upon them as the time allows.

Many people are not like that. They want an engine that works. Its efficiency, appearance or inherent reliability due to elegant design doesn't matter for them. If it works reasonably well, carries the builder from A to B (or more importantly makes money for the them), that's more than enough.

I personally respect this point of view, and completely understand it. What I can't respect or accept, regardless of how hard I try to, is being stoned to death or labeled as a Luddite because I and people with similar perspectives value a different set of things in their lives.

Mass produced things have their place, as well as artisanal, one-off ones. I believe we can live together, one doesn't need to kill the other.

I won't go into building of these AI systems, because I'm tired of repeating ethical and other concerns going into it, not because it's boring, but because people don't listen or care about them. Maybe I'll reiterate them when I have more time, next time.

I think it's like a lot of things - partially unnatural but it worked up enough people who hype it naturally. I know someone irl who's all into infodumping LLM jargon now and afaik has no monetary/investment incentive for it.

The graveyard of LLM-generated comments from new accounts on the bottom of every thread supports your hypothesis.