I used to teach Computer Science at university, long before the "AI boom". Even back then, we were overloaded with students who had no true passion for technology or science but were there only because they had been told it's a good career move. They were convinced by their parents or schoolteachers that tech is a high paying, high status job like law or medicine.
When they graduated and actually went to get a job they realized the market was already saturated with others like them - who had rushed into an IT degree and a career that they didn't really enjoy.
Some will say: good, fuck ‘em. In the 2010s, Knowledge Workers told everyone to learn to code while they sipped kombucha and played Xbox in beanbag chairs. Then, Knowledge Workers sat inside during the pandemic while frontline workers risked their health to make Amazon and Uber Eats deliveries. Now, those same Knowledge Workers are building AI that threatens to eliminate work for humans across industries and make a very few people wealthy beyond imagination. And these same assholes want pity now?
No coders I knew in the 2010s were telling others to "learn to code" because they already knew the above - tech was already oversaturated with graduates in the 2000s. We were telling students to do what you are talented and/or passionate about. It's only pundits and posers like Musk who tell people to "learn to code".
On the other hand, the people who actually do have a passion for science and technology are burnt out because of the commercialization of tech. They want to work on interesting tech that makes people's lives better, not add features to products that will sell more licenses. The article's discussion of "Workism" encapsulates some of this, but all the problems it describes were still there many years ago before the "threat of AI".