I'm a junior SWE at a mid-sized AI startup. The article is pretty much spot on, but I'm not sure that the romantic view of data science the article argues against is actually that prevalent.

It seems like you would need a very specific level of knowledge to romanticize data science in that way. Most people know too little (So you're basically trying to build skynet?), and most of the rest are either in the industry or know someone that is, and so have a more realistic view.

I don't know, I did maths in undergrad, maybe some of the more clueless CS majors thought this way.