The one thing that really stands out to me in this struggle about AI adoption, is, that the (supposed) technically oriented people advocating wide spread AI adoption are not battle hardened software engineers but almost without fail new-comers, who (I suspect) see now a way to a career path to glory, short circuiting the long laborious process of actually learning a trade by overtaking aforementioned experienced engineers on the right lane.

Now put yourself into the position of management who typically have no street creds in software engineering, but so often believe in their innate ability to judge people and second guess the future by their (inborn) gut feeling.

What they see, is a group of fresh-faced new-comers promising the world and group of weary veterans of the trade defending the status quo.

Then the rampant ageism of the industry (and their distrust of the experts) hits: Older engineers are (in their view) not able to learn or to change (let's not mention that not to change and stick to the processes and not challenge the status quo for decades was exactly what you trained them for and what you selected for).

Also the cult of disruption plays a role here: Management has been indoctrinated for decades that disruption is the window of opportunity, that "normal people" won't be able to see that opportunity and how companies missing the window of opportunity will be left behind and wither (their favorite example is Nokia).

And now I ask you: Is it so astonishing that (without a smidgen of evidence) management (as a general rule) comes down at the side of the fresh-faced new-comers with the big promises instead of the naysayers (the experienced software engineers)?