This is the ultimate cope out: taking technology as a singular entity that evolved outside of human control and is simply commented on by passive observers who are simply "pessimist" or "optimist" about it instead of people whose lives are meaningfully impacted by it.

The trick to do so is to flatten human experience under the determinism of "efficiency" (which you euphemistically called "quality of life"). This way "optimists" can dismiss nuanced oppositions to a lack of regulations as "luddism" and fold together anti-vaxxers and AI skeptics, as if those are the same people, with the same motivations or arguments.

This also conveniently distracts from the fact that technological pessimism exists as a contrast to periods of technological optimism, which helps evade the question of what changed: after all, pessimists aways existed, as your link shows.

I would suggest unfolding the "pessimist" reductionism and questioning why AI skeptics are not stem-cell skeptics. This will probably help avoid arguments that sound very much like "the end justify the means".