Part of it is probably because we've already been through this? The SWE field has seen exactly these reactions over the past 4+ years.

Some people saw "the spark" before LLMs were mainstream. We had code autocomplete models based on GPT2 that ran on your machine and provided line-based autocomplete. Then we had gpt3.5 (chatgpt launch) where it almost looked like it could write python, then we had gpt4 and saw the first glimpses of actual code writing, then opus4 / gpt5, and today we have sol/fable etc. At every step we had people in this field write the same kinds of takes. And at every step the tech evolved, improved, and got better. To a point where the vast majority learned to accept it, and the denialists (there are still some) are now in a minority.

And the acceptance phase was not "we are now useless as SWE", nor was it "hah, it's only for the juniors, we are safe. It was, mainly, "we can now work at a higher level of abstraction, and use our experience to guide these tools and work faster / broader / deeper in a topic. Basically understand the tools, learn their pros and cons, and adapt at using them.

Also part of it could be that the message seems to complain about the situation without providing alternatives. What are the alternatives? What are they proposing? "Please don't do this" does seem like gate keeping if you don't offer an alternative. What exactly do they want these labs to do? Don't try to solve the problems? (stop the count?) Don't publish the results? It's not clear to me.

I guess a lot of people are unclear on the messaging. Is this purely ideological, or is it something more? (It doesn't help that AHM also has a section where they highlight their members who pledge to do research "without AI assistance". Whatever that means. Yeah, that's cute, but can signal denial, which again we've already seen in SWE, and hopefully most people have dismissed it already) Are these statements part of the 7 stages of grief, or is there more? When taken at face value, the statements seem rushed, unprepared and "in denial". At least when compared to writing on the same topic from other people in the field (Tao et all).