> You can choose to use it or not
This is becoming less and less true unless you're specifically talking about usage of it outside of a work environment. Many work places are requiring people to use it and/or tracking usage. I don't know about in academic settings, but I'd imagine it's becoming heavily used there too?
My academic connections that I keep in touch with never really left the 1990s. And no one is pushing them on AI.
Sure, but their peers (who do use AI) will out-publish them soon enough and solve the open problems before they do.
So your downside here is problems get solved faster?