I've been feeling it too.

Up until a few weeks ago, I've been able to successfully avoid using AI at work. But then mandates happened and now I'm being forced to use them. Absolutely no guidance from leadership though. "Just figure it out amongst yourselves". Other folks in the company have similar reservations but I feel I'm the only one who has very strong feelings about it in the "morality" and ethical sense. I just can't ignore what the tech is built upon and is doing to other people. All so people like us can open 20 PRs in a day. PRs that don't even get merged because no one can keep up with reviews. For tickets that before would've been labeled as "not worth it". For a job that wasn't even that hard to begin with.

Funny thing is that 1-2 years ago when it was all still new I was more open minded. It was a shiny new tool and naturally I would like to try it out. I was one of the first finding potential use-cases for the team. But the more I looked and learned about it the more I hated it.

And I am not a Luddite. Before all of this, I would personally spend my _free_ time using and reading about random and often obscure tools and languages like Lisp, Clojure, Slackware. I'd spend hours curating my Emacs config. I was learning "k8s the hard way" back when it was the hottest tech thing. Does that sound like a Luddite?

I don't have the privilege to just pivot to another career so I have no choice but to stick it out. My only consolation is that when my kids are working age in a couple of years, when they ask me what the fuck happened, I can look them in the eye and honestly say that I did what I can and I did not cheer it on.