You're missing the point.

If all we're left with is "trust me bro", then we're left with nothing.

Disagree with that one. "trust me" is not a good policy if your intent is to minimize deception. That's why "trust me" is not a good policy for banks because even a 1% loss of people's money is a bad thing. But it's a good policy for filtering out people because you only need to find a few good ones to have a community. The very strong anti-AI people and the very strong pro-AI people should be easy to find, and what's in the middle can be ignored.