This is a tortured line of reasoning. There's nothing confusing about what's happening - people can have every reason to hate something without it meaning that they are "pretending" nothing is happening or not preparing for it (which may mean fighting to protect people in some way, and planning for losing that battle, in equal measures).

It's strange that your comment puts "fear of change" right there next to one of the actual concrete reasons. Usually the people disparaging negative attitudes about AI say "fear of change" to avoid talking about the obvious reasons.