Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean obviously they had a point? No one wants to lose their job.
Everybody wants to lose their jobs. Almost by definition your job is something you do not because you want to, but because you need to earn a living. Even if your job coincides with your hobby, you would prefer not to have your economic welfare tied to it in a way that drives how you engage with it. We are on the verge of making this possible, if a bunch of myopic morons -- people who have never been right about a si…
Not everybody agrees with your definition of what a job means (some people are very passionate about their jobs; not me but I understand their point of view), and regardless, "losing your job" is a thing that is forced upon you and is a source of distress for most people, not something people "want". Many people throughout history, after losing their jobs, never recover (either psychologically, or in terms of the economy not giving them a place to recover).
To be clear, I don't subscribe to the following view at all, but a lot of people derive their self-worth from their occupation. Don't you remember, a few years back, an infamous comment made by someone on HN stating that "if you're fired from your job, you've failed as a person"? It was thankfully downvoted to hell, but it goes to show you your perception of jobs and job loss is not at all widely shared.
Even if nobody wanted to live without a job, until we reach some sort of post-scarcity utopia, the current AI trend is a threat.