Yeah, they do. Go talk to anyone who isn't in a super-online bubble such as HN or Bsky or a Firefox early-adopter program. They're all using it, all the time, for everything. I don't like it either, but that's the reality.
Not really. Go talk to anyone who uses the internet for Facebook, Whatsapp, and not much else. Lots of people have typed in chatgpt.com or had Google's AI shoved in their face, but the vast majority of "laypeople" I've talked to about AI (actually, they've talked to me about AI after learning I'm a tech guy -- "so what do you think about AI?") seem to be resigned to the fact that after the personal computer and the internet, whatever the rich guys in SF do is what is going to happen anyway. But I sense a feeling of powerlessness and a fear of being left behind, not anything approaching genuine interest in or excitement by the technology.
We can take principled stands against these things, and I do because I am an obnoxiously principled dork, but the reality is it's everywhere and everyone other than us is using it.
They are already preached at that they need a new phone or laptop every other year. Then there's a new social platform that changes its UI every 6 months or quarterly, and now similarly for their word processors and everything.
This is kinda like how if you ask everyone how often they eat McDonald's, everyone will say never or rarely. But they still sell a billion burgers each year :) Assuming you're not polling your Bsky buddies, I suspect these people are using AI tools a lot more than they admit or possibly even know. Auto-generated summaries, text generation, image editing, and conversation prompts all get a ton of use.
Do you know someone? Using Firefox nowadays is itself a "super-online bubble"