"Notably, none of the designers I spoke to are against A.I. altogether. All of them said that the technology is unavoidable..."
these people are not very bright
People understand that they can't, in isolation, fight againts hundreds of billions of capital.
It is better to profess allegiance to their new replacements and eek out a little more time of employment, than to be branded by the powers that be as a contrarian, a luddite, an enemy of progress and get the boot now, not tomorrow.
Can you make your terse point more clear? It isn't obvious.