Important public service announcement:
When someone says "The people building AI earnestly believe X" they're implicitly smuggling in two assumptions which are clearly false when you make them explicit:
Assumption 1. The people building AI is a monolithic group of people who all believe the same thing and thus can collectively make a claim about the technology.
Assumption 2. AI itself is a well defined and understood technology where everyone building it agrees on what it is, how it works, and what it means to build it and the implications of the thing once it's built.
The original statement can certainly be true if we account for these assumptions but only once it's been modified to the correct framing, which is:
"Some people building some things that are called AI earnestly believe X."
Then, before you can evaluate the claim, there must be a clear explanation of:
1. Who those people are.
2. What they are referring to when they say AI.
Until this has happened, you should view the statement as an attempt to persuade you with propaganda that bypasses your critical thinking and not an attempt to inform you.