- 12 Dec, 2025 *
73% of creative professionals criticise AI.
18% of entrepreneurs do.
Same tools. Different reactions.
Why?
I spent weeks digging through 11,000+ comments across LinkedIn and Reddit trying to understand the AI criticism patterns I kept seeing. What I found wasn’t what I expected.
The loudest critics aren’t evaluating the tool.
They’re defending their identity.
TL;DR
AI criticism correlates almost perfectly with vocational identity threat — not with actual tool quality or ethics concerns
Creative professionals (designers, writers, filmmakers) show 2.7x higher criticism rates than business professionals
The arguments people make ("AI has no soul") are proxy arguments masking the real fear: "AI is doing what I do"
The divide isn’…
- 12 Dec, 2025 *
73% of creative professionals criticise AI.
18% of entrepreneurs do.
Same tools. Different reactions.
Why?
I spent weeks digging through 11,000+ comments across LinkedIn and Reddit trying to understand the AI criticism patterns I kept seeing. What I found wasn’t what I expected.
The loudest critics aren’t evaluating the tool.
They’re defending their identity.
TL;DR
AI criticism correlates almost perfectly with vocational identity threat — not with actual tool quality or ethics concerns
Creative professionals (designers, writers, filmmakers) show 2.7x higher criticism rates than business professionals
The arguments people make ("AI has no soul") are proxy arguments masking the real fear: "AI is doing what I do"
The divide isn’t optimist vs pessimist — it’s execution-focused vs thinking-focused professionals
The uncomfortable choice: protect the identity or level up the skill
The pattern I couldn’t unsee
It started as a hunch.
Every time I saw someone posting "AI is just slop" or "AI has no soul," I noticed something about their profile. Designer. Writer. Illustrator. Filmmaker.
Every time I saw someone posting "AI is a game-changer" or treating it as a productivity tool, different profile. Founder. Consultant. Engineer. Operator.
Same platform. Same discourse. Completely different reactions.
I wondered if I was cherry-picking. So I did what any obsessive founder would do:
I built agents to scrape the data.
The methodology
Ten LinkedIn posts about AI — 1,085 comments total. Then Reddit: 10 subreddits, 11,000 comments across creative, business, tech, and entrepreneur communities.
For each comment, I tracked:
- Vocation (based on bio, subreddit, or self-identification)
- Sentiment (Anti-AI, Pro-AI, Neutral)
- Core argument being made
- Engagement metrics
The patterns were so clean they made me uncomfortable.
The numbers
| Vocation | Anti-AI Sentiment |
|---|---|
| Creative Professionals | 73% |
| Business Professionals | 31% |
| Tech Professionals | 22% |
| Entrepreneurs | 18% |
On LinkedIn, filmmakers showed 87% anti-AI sentiment. Writers: 86%. Designers: 75%.
On Reddit, the pattern held. Creative subreddits averaged 73% anti-AI. Entrepreneur subreddits: 18%.
The correlation between "execution-focused vocation" and "AI criticism" is one of the cleanest signals I’ve ever seen in sentiment data.
This isn’t about optimism vs pessimism.
It’s about whose work AI can now do.
The proxy arguments
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
People don’t say "I’m afraid AI will replace me." That’s too vulnerable. Instead, they use proxy arguments — socially acceptable criticisms that mask the real concern.
| What They Say | What They Mean |
|---|---|
| "AI is just slop" | "AI is doing what I do" |
| "AI has no soul" | "AI removes the human touch I’m known for" |
| "AI art is theft" | "My livelihood is threatened" |
| "Environmental concerns" | "I need a moral reason to oppose this" |
| "AI lacks authenticity" | "My identity is tied to being authentic" |
The tell is in the language.
Creative critics use existential words: "soul," "authenticity," "extinction," "theft."
Business and tech professionals use pragmatic words: "tool," "amplifier," "efficiency," "collaboration."
Same technology. Completely different framing.
The tool analogy rejection
Business professionals often use tool analogies to discuss AI:
"A camera doesn’t make you a photographer."
"Photoshop didn’t replace designers."
"Excel didn’t replace accountants."
Creative professionals reject these analogies — and the rejection is revealing.
"A camera doesn’t make you a filmmaker, but AI isn’t a camera — it’s replacing the filmmaker."
"Photoshop is a tool. AI is doing the design."
They reject the analogy because the analogy doesn’t fit their experience.
For a business professional, AI handles execution while they focus on strategy. AI is a tool.
For a creative professional, AI handles the very thing that defines their identity. AI isn’t a tool — it’s competition.
The real divide isn’t about whether AI is good or bad. It’s about whether AI does your core work or accelerates it.
Execution vs thinking
This is the framework that explains everything.
Every professional role sits somewhere on a spectrum:
Execution-focused: The value comes from the doing — the writing, the designing, the illustrating, the composing. The output is the product.
Thinking-focused: The value comes from the deciding — the strategy, the judgment, the synthesis, the architecture. The output is downstream of the thinking.
AI threatens execution. AI amplifies thinking.
If your identity is "I write" — AI is a threat.
If your identity is "I think, and deploy writing as one tool among many" — AI is leverage.
Same person could be either, depending on how they frame their own role.
The engagement asymmetry
Anti-AI comments from creatives average significantly more engagement than pro-AI comments:
- LinkedIn: Anti-AI comments average 4.9 likes. Pro-AI: 1.5 likes.
- Reddit (creative subs): Anti-AI posts average 892 upvotes. Pro-AI: 384.
The algorithm rewards identity defence because it’s emotional. But popularity isn’t truth.
This creates a feedback loop.
The most visible AI criticism comes from people whose identities are threatened. Their posts get amplified because they’re emotional. The discourse gets skewed toward fear. And people watching assume the criticism is about the tool, not the threat.
It’s not.
What’s actually happening
The data reveals a psychological mechanism that nobody talks about:
Vocational Identity Threat.
When a technology can perform the core task that defines your professional identity, the response isn’t rational evaluation. It’s identity defence.
The criticism isn’t about AI’s actual capabilities or limitations.
It’s about protecting a sense of self that’s built on "I am the person who does X."
This isn’t a moral failing. It’s human.
But it is a choice point.
The uncomfortable choice
Everyone whose core work AI can now perform faces the same fork:
Option 1: Protect the identity.
- Argue against AI
- Defend the old way of working
- Hope the technology goes away
- Dismiss improvements as "still slop"
- Build community around resistance
Option 2: Level up the skill.
- Accept that execution is being commoditized
- Shift focus to thinking, strategy, and judgment
- Use AI to amplify rather than replace
- Build new identity around what AI can’t do
- Become more valuable as AI proliferates
The first option feels righteous.
The second option is harder — and better.
You can’t stop the commoditization of execution. You can only decide whether to evolve faster than the tools improve.
What AI can’t do (yet)
The pessimistic read is that everyone’s job is at risk.
The realistic read is more nuanced.
AI struggles with:
- Judgment about what matters
- Taste and curation
- Cross-domain synthesis
- Accountability and ownership
- Relationship and trust
- Novel problem framing
These are all thinking skills, not execution skills.
The professionals who build identity around these — who define themselves by how they think rather than what they produce — aren’t threatened by AI.
They’re amplified by it.
The polymath advantage
There’s a pattern in the pro-AI data that’s worth noting.
The most enthusiastic AI adopters aren’t specialists. They’re generalists and polymaths — people who work across multiple domains and use AI as leverage in all of them.
They can:
- See patterns across domains
- Frame problems in ways AI can help with
- Judge quality outside their narrow expertise
- Synthesise insights others can’t see
The monospec — the deep specialist in one execution skill — is the most vulnerable.
The polymath is the most empowered.
In the AI era, breadth of thinking matters more than depth of execution.
FAQ: navigating vocational identity threat
"Are you saying creatives are just scared?"
I’m saying the data shows a near-perfect correlation between "AI can do my core work" and "I criticise AI."
Fear is rational when your livelihood is threatened. But fear disguised as aesthetic or ethical criticism distorts the discourse. The honest conversation is about economic displacement and identity — not "soul" and "authenticity."
"What if AI really is just slop?"
Most AI output is slop. That’s a user problem, not a tool problem.
The same dynamic happened with desktop publishing, stock photography, and website builders. The floor rose. The ceiling stayed set by the human.
A mediocre creative with AI is still mediocre. An excellent creative with AI is faster at being excellent.
"How do I know if I’m defending identity or legitimately criticising?"
Ask yourself: Would I hold this opinion if my income wasn’t tied to the outcome?
If you’re a designer criticising AI image generation, imagine you’re a plumber with no stake. Do you still care about "soul"? Or do you suddenly see it as a useful tool for people who can’t afford designers?
The answer reveals whether it’s critique or defence.
"What should creatives actually do?"
Shift from execution to thinking.
Don’t be "the person who writes." Be "the person who knows what to say and why it matters." Use AI to outline you’re writing faster. Spend the saved time on strategy, curation, and judgment.
The writers who thrive will be the ones who were never just writers — they were thinkers who happened to use writing as output.
Action steps
- Audit your identity honestly.
Is your professional identity built on execution (what you produce) or thinking (what you decide)? If it’s execution-heavy, you’re in the vulnerable category — regardless of what you tell yourself.
- Notice your reactions.
Next time you feel a strong negative reaction to AI, pause. Is this a rational evaluation? Or is something deeper being triggered? Name it.
- Shift one layer up.
Whatever you do, ask: What’s the layer above this? If you write, the layer above is editorial judgment. If you design, the layer above is creative direction. Move toward the layer AI can’t touch.
- Use AI where you’re not threatened.
Start using AI in domains where you have no identity stake. You’ll evaluate it more honestly. Then bring that perspective back to your core work.
- Build for the next version of yourself.
The question isn’t "will AI replace me?" The question is "what will I be when AI handles the execution?" Start becoming that person now.
The real conversation
The AI discourse is mostly noise.
The haters are protecting egos. The hypebros are protecting business models. The actual signal is buried under takes designed for engagement rather than truth.
But underneath all of it, there’s a real question:
What is your identity when the thing that defined you becomes a commodity?
That’s the question the data is really asking.
73% of creatives are answering it with resistance.
18% of entrepreneurs are answering it with adaptation.
Same tools. Same moment. Different choices.
The data doesn’t tell you which choice is right.
But it does show you which one is winning.
—Tariq