AI in the realm of political debates is a "pros vs. cons" in the unique aspect of "one man's pros is another man's cons"
Political debates have a certain performative element, and a certain ego element.
For many, actually finding the right answer is only a tertiary goal
In college I took a debate course, and the instructor did a very unique exercise with the class.
To prove that "having the right answer" wasn't the top priority, he picked 3 topics, and debated from the "obviously wrong" position against three volunteers (one was about the moon landing being fake or not, I don't recall what the other two were), he proceeded to mop the floor all 3.
And then explained how memorized (contextually lacking) factoids, the ability to quickly raise points of doubt about the opponents assertions, and the ability to do those things calmy and confidently were the keys to winning.
AI eliminates two of the three "points of prowess". So people who were used to having certain advantages, no longer enjoy those advantages, and they don't seem to like it too much.
While I can be sympathetic to some of the nuanced critiques of AI (there are valid concerns about accuracy at this point in the game, though it's getting better by the day... and Agentic AI is going to be a game changer -- it will be to regular AI, what regular AI is to Ask Jeeves lol)
When people get downright hostile about AI use in debates, it resembles a similar psychological headspace as people who (back in the day when social media was first taking off, and became a new way to have a public argument in front of an audience) would be in an argument/debate online and would get frustrated and say "Well, I bet you wouldn't say that to my face or I'd knock you out!!!" ...because they were comfortable with the old arrangement where they had that "easy button" they could push to "win" an argument by shutting up the other person, and the new tech innovation took that away from them.
The same is true with this situation.
AI bridges "ignorance gaps" (notice I didn't say "stupidity", I said "ignorance", they're two different things) in a way that's uncomfortable for people who invested a lot of time into getting certain pieces of information committed to memory "the hard way".
Just to use a simplistic example. If I was debating a lawyer about the law or a doctor about medicine, they spent years and years reading and re-reading and re-reading again to be able to build up that "intellectual muscle memory" and knowledge to be able to pull out that factoid or case study from the mental rolodex, on-demand and sound smart and important in front of other people... I get it, it's a good feeling and looks impressive. When a tool comes along that allows someone who didn't invest all that time into it, to retrieve that same information just a quickly, they'd not happy campers about that "loss of edge" they once enjoyed.
I honest feel that in my lifetime (maybe even in the next 15 years), we'll see instances of Agentic AI bots acting as legal representation for people in court, and diagnosing and prescribing medicines in a medical environment.
