People are already very dumb on purpose. We're indoctrinated from birth into anti-human, anti-scientific ideologies like nationalism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc. The vast majority of people never escape this brainwashed cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
The grift of non-existent "AI" is much more of a symptom than a root cause. It's the same with most forms or "science" under capitalism: extreme hype followed by extremely oppressive applications.