Well yes the corporate accelerationists are certainly pushing for it the most, shoehorning the tech into things it doesn't belong in to see if they can somehow come up on top, which that in turn makes lots of people resentful towards it in a reactionary way.

You have artists who've lost work due to diffusion models, teachers who can't assign homework essays anymore, people who hate Microsoft Copilot, just anyone not wanting to be replaced by a bot or being forced to use the tech to avoid being outcompeted, people set in their ways who don't want change or imagine it being destructive, etc. It's a large crowd that one can appeal to for personal gain, politics 101. Anyone with half believable credentials can go on a talk show and say the things people want to hear, maybe sell a book or two afterwards.

Are today's models on the brink of some exponential self perpetuating shot towards superintelligence? Obviously not. Are they overhyped glorified lookup tables? Also no. Are there problems? Definitely. But I don't think it's entirely fair to dismiss a tech based on someone misappropriating it in monopolistic endeavours instead of directing dismissal towards those people themselves.

Like, similar to how Elon's douchebaggery has tainted EVs for lots of people for no practical reason, the same has Altman's done for LLMs.