The role of science is to advance human knowledge and understand what's true. The role of engineering is to bridge the current world to something new discovered by science. Until recently, the new things were the domain of scientists, so many of them understandably feel like their existence is threatened by AI.

Another aspect I haven't seen anyone talk about is how big tech poached a generation of millennials from grad schools ~15 years ago. I think a lot of those people feel like this is a comeuppance for unnecessary or bad faith gate keeping in academia.