My hypothesis from the start is that people were on a roll with the crypto hate (which was a lot less ambiguous, since there were fewer legitimate applications there).

Then the AI gold rush hit and both investors and haters smoothly rolled onto that and transferred over a lot of the same discourse. It helps that AIbros overhyped the crap out of the tech, but the carryover hate was also entirely unwilling to acknowledge any kind of nuance from the go.

So now you have a bunch of people with significant emotional capital baked into the idea that genAI is fundamentally a scam and/or a world-destroying misstep that have a LOT of face to lose by conceding even a sliver of usefulness or legitimacy to the thing. They are not entirely right... but not entirely wrong, either, so there you go, the perfect recipe for an eternal culture war.

Welcome to discourse and public opinion in the online age. It kinda sucks.