The cynicism about AI's capabilities is well understood, we're at the peak of the hype cycle. People are selling AI across the board, but the reality will fall short of the sales pitch in innumerable ways across the board whether that be programmer productivity or anything else.

Then there's the meta cynicism about the sales pitches of AIs, reinforced my CEOs speaking to wall street about how AI will enable staff reductions. The rank and file is understandbly very angry about this, coupled with the understanding by technical folks that AI is far from being able to replace the function of actual deep-thinking humans. This is when the temptation to minimize the value of executives and "call their bluff" comes in. But here is where you need a dose of reality. Executives aren't stupid as you think, they don't get paid what they do for no reason, and despite the bad and anti-humanitarian decisions they make in the name of shareholder, they actually can't be replaced by AI. Both executives and boards understand this and so it's not really a topic of discussion. You are free to disagree with this of course, but at some point its just toothless wishful thinking.