@gloriouscow @cr1901 For myself, with regards to dealing with the cognitive dissonance, of watching technologists I personally know and admire adopt LLMs (some of which are on here, too, and who I am somewhat embarrassed to say have seen my unhinged anti-AI posts 😅):
I think this has been much easier for me to deal with, because my personal observation for a long time has been that technologists have a very weak sense of ethics. Both in the sense of having good ethics that I agree with, and in the sense of having thought about the subject of ethics at all. Most technologists have not sat down and decided what their moral boundaries are, and what the relationship of their own morality is to the technology they use or develop. Even very skilled ones that I have learned a lot from. Most people are content to think that technologies are value-neutral, and are content to follow the trend of what everyone else is doing.
I have observed brilliant technologists, long before LLMs, shrug at the ethics of many other things, so for me it is entirely believable that they shrug at the ethics of this, too. I don't think many of these people are inherently morally bad, but I do think that they just don't care. This is bad because I do think that people just following the trend into widespread AI adoption is an ethically bad outcome. However, I also think that as AI backlash increases, if the pendulum swings back to anti-AI being the norm in software: they will follow as well.
It is also the sad truth that for minority women in many computer fields, we must work with brilliant peers who are not necessarily bad people, but who by way of their privileged position in life will say and do ignorant things. We must see someone saying something hurtful, but not make a fuss about it, because it's not worth the time of having to personally educate that person, to deal with the backlash, or to be labelled as a "confrontational" person. And we must do this as well, for brilliant colleagues and mentors and people we admire, and that we learn a lot from. So in that sense, I am very well practiced at this kind of cognitive dissonance - I do it in order to preserve a career.
I hope this is maybe a little helpful for you, though this is only my personal experience. And if you do take a break, I hope it is a restful and rejuvenating one!