I think it's a bit reductive to flatten the conversation so much. While I don't have as much of an extreme reaction as the people you talk about, the post left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Not because I'm one of "those people" - I agree with the core of the post, and appreciate that the person writing it has actual experience in the field.

It's that the whole conversation around machine learning has become "tainted" - mention AI, and the average person will envision that exact type of an evil MBA this post is rallying against. And I don't want to be associated with them, even implicitly.

I shouldn't feel ashamed for taking some interest and studying machine learning. I shouldn't feel ashamed for having some degree of cautious optimism - the kind that sees a slightly better world, and not dollar signs. And yet.

The author here draws pretty clear lines in what they're talking about - but most readers won't care or even read that far. And the degree of how emotionally charged it is does lead me to think that there's a degree of further discontent, not just the C-suite rhetoric that almost everyone but the actual C-suites can get behind.