Yeah, that's some really terrible framing.
These aren't "AI critics" or "AI skeptics" who've "taken a safety-conscious view of AI development" any more than the Proud Boys are boys who are proud.
They don't object to generative AI because of its environmental or economic impact, its threat to creative fields, its role in poisoning search engines and promoting misinformation. They object to it because they think Terminator 2 is a documentary and OpenAI is going to create Skynet.