Because both tech and social media discourse trends towards the simplistic and naive, a note on what words actually mean:

Just because you criticise a thing that doesn’t mean you’re a sceptic about said thing or against it. Being a fan who promotes a thing can even require you to be critical of it

For example, I’m a big fan of the romance author Georgette Heyer, but any conversation I have about her will be equal parts recommendation and criticism because her body of work is a fucking mess

A fan who isn’t outright irrational has enough proximity to the work to recognise its flaws and that you need to be able to navigate those flaws to enjoy it

In fact, aggressive hypercriticism is a more common failure mode of fandom than uncritical adoration

All of this is important because you, as a reader, need to be aware that people who are labelled as “sceptical” by themselves or other often aren’t. They’re actually fans and promoters who just aren’t outright irrational

This matters outside of culture of media because quite a few of the people who commonly get labelled “AI sceptics” are genuine, unironic, no-profit-motive, outright fans and enthusiasts of the tech. They just also have enough proximity to it to make them incapable of ignoring the issues. They outline those issues and criticise the tech specifically to help you use it, not to discourage.

They’re fans. Not sceptics.

A useful rubric is toolmaking. Do they make tools and software to help you adopt and use “AI”? Then they aren’t sceptics in any meaningful way. You don’t make tools to use a thing unless you want to promote the adoption of a thing.

All this matters because it’s useful to be aware of the biases of what you read. Taken in isolation, a fan’s blog post can look like a sceptic’s critique, but it actually serves the opposite purpose by always leaving a path towards adoption and use open.