It wasn’t even all that long ago. I noticed around the time ChatGPT 3.5 was released I saw a significant change in tone regarding LLMs and diffusion models. I think that’s when some serious astroturfing started.

I’m old enough that I worked my first IT summer job the same year slashdot was founded. I’ve seen a lot of tech tribalism form and dissipate, and this one didn’t feel organic. My gut says a lot of the us-vs-them tension originated in a deliberate campaign to cast AI boosters as the tech industry in-crowd, and ‘other’ the people not on-board. Who knows.