I think a huge amount of the AI backlash is really the centaur/reverse centaur debate, about the mechanization and withdrawal of humans from all touch points and loops for companies.

AI is the new header that this already well under way de-humanizing (in multiple senses) process has sort of gotten subsumed by, and it just feels (and is) so bad, is such a ossifying horrible anti-responsiveness that is so gross to run across.

That systems are so locked, so un malleable, means the agents riding atop them are infuriatingly limited. Be those human or LLM agents. And this lock in? That's 50% of what's making "AI" so hated, so loathed. That it is the useless messenger, the helpless bearer of the bad news, that the system does not allow it.