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I'm gonna support this, especially since the target audience here is the readers of the NYT. He's given a big platform here, and there's not much to gain by memeing on this fascist getting his neck popped open.
What's most important here is to meet the audience where they're at, address the real problems they have in their daily life, the reasons why so many people are getting drawn into fascism, and reframe all that to point out the real causes and the way people like Kirk worked for the system by blaming it all on the wrong people. Not many, but some of these readers will get something out of this, make a thought they've never had before, have a sudden realization about the ways that every capitalist politician will use their own method to prolong the very system that is ruining their life. This isn't really about Kirk, it's about those few that will have a change of mind given the opportunity.
Though he does go too much into a "Oh no I lost my debate bro, if only I debated him one more time he would have changed his mind" kind of vibe. Debating these people achieves absolutely nothing, you're only giving them free content to clip out and propagandize young people into ruining themselves forever.
but cool in any case
I have some experience with a friend who is also a tech bro, works in a startup that is currently trying to incorporate some cutting edge AI tools into the work process and see how much they can turn coding into a thing of the past.
He's generally quite left leaning, but I think the pride from working on something cutting edge has gotten to him a bit. He didn't really agree that AI will lead to engineering jobs being lost due to the massive increase of productivity per worker, because he thinks the software giants doing this are going downhill because of doing this and they're going to get overtaken by the "good" companies.
This should lead to a pretty long discussion about how capitalism works, and how capitalist competition eventually leads to monopolies like the said software giants, exactly because they are the ones to exploit workers the most and get the most surplus value out of them.
Also what must be discussed around the improvements that AI brings technologically is, as with any techological advancement, "technology for whom?". If we lived under a socialist system working for the people, AI would naturally lead to working hours being reduced, increased productivity being utilized for the common good, workers needing less time for coding and more time for creative thinking, and participation in the democratic process. Under capitalism though, the now unneeded workers will just be thrown back into the reserve army of jobless workers, the now easier engineering positions will become a reason for their wages being reduced, the increased overall productivity will as always be used for the needs of capitalists, and the environment will get fucked because it's not as profitable to do AI with limited resources.