I fully support your POV as presented in the bottom half of your comment.
But vast majority of people discussing the HW issue stays in the original narrative of Hive blockchain needs a content so it distributes tokens to content producers.
Now the AI-generated content is like GMO-food. Some hate it on principle, others do not mind and may focus on various different parameters instead.
Ultimately, AI-generated content can be cornered on Hive if that's what the stakeholders end up enforcing but at this point anyone stating it is obvious AI content needs to be policed is either narrow-minded or brainwashed. Even taskmaster reminds us the YouTube grew on cat videos right under his post that takes the no-AI-rule for granted (while trying to grow Hive by finding the 2023 version of cat videos for/via LeoThreads).
Now, any reference to academical environment is thin ice. Universities have terms of service. Content creating on Hive does not.
Does any cat video consumer care whether they are manual or AI? Unless the AI origin is shoved in their face specifically to make them feel deceived?
HW was originally funded by DAO to detect stolen goods. People who dislike that tend to have hard time in most environments for a good reason.
Let's stay on topic. HW issue is about enforcing a subjective ruleset on manufacturing goods (which happens to be text/audio/video content here). Fun fact: the word literally refers to producing goods using [human] hands.
It is nowhere near the stolen content/food issue.
It has nothing to do with grow-your-penis spam that won't destroy the chain as any human reader can easily DV it (despite taskmaster telling us otherwise in his best gatekeeper voice).
Objecting the war on GMO-content on Hive is totally legitimate.