A refusal to even acknowledge that AI might work isn't a very sensible refutation of the risks we're going to face.
That's probably why they're not doing that. The core premise-- we will rely on AI so much that we will de-skill ourselves-- requires acknowledging that AI works.
No it doesn't require that because the vast majority of people aren't rational actors and they don't optimize for the quality of their work - they optimize for their own comfort and emotional experience.
They'll happily produce and defend low quality work if they get to avoid the discomfort of having to engage in cognitively strenuous work, in the same way people rationalize every other choice they make that's bad for them, the society, the environment, and anyone else.
But what does it matter? After the game of semantics is all said and done, the work is still being done to a lower standard than before, and people are letting their skills atrophy.
People are rational, and the example you give actually shows that; they prefer reduced workload, so they optimize for their own comfort and emotional experience. What isn't rational about that?
If people made decisions the way you described, by carefully considering and accepting trade-offs then I would agree that they are rational actors.
But people don't do that, they pick an outcome they prefer and try to rationalize it afterwards by claiming that trade-offs don't exist.
The article acknowledges that AI progress to date has worked. It snidely disagrees without argument that AI the field could work from here on out.