I don’t think anyone decrying the current crop of “AI” is against “thinking machines”. We’re not there yet, LLMs don’t think, despite the marketing.
I didn’t enjoy Dune, by the way. No shade on those who did, of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish it.
If you think there’s something there, explain your point. Make an argument. Maybe I have misunderstood something and will correct my thinking, or maybe you have misunderstood and will correct yours. But as it is, I don’t see your comment as providing any value to the discussion. It’s the equivalent of a hit and run, meant to insult the other person while remaining uncommitted enough to shield yourself from criticism.
The point is AI has lots of useful applications, even though there's also lots of detestable ones.
The quote (from Dijkstra) is that asking whether machines think is as uninteresting as asking whether submarines swim. He's not saying machines don't think, he's saying it's a pointless thing to argue about - an opinion about whether AIs think is an opinion about word usage, not about AIs.