As much as I dislike AI, programming is a field where there’s always something for someone to hate. E.g., should we ban C++ articles because there’s a lot of Rust fans that hate them?
Your two options are not exclusive. Just create a community to discuss AI programming, cross post to the generic programming community if you think it’s relevant, and let people upvote/downvote as they see fit.
The vast majority of users don’t need “more meat” in their OS. They need stability. Linux Mint works great on that front, I don’t see the need to loose focus with multiple new distros. Not everyone needs to jump distro every month.
Disclaimer: i’ve been using Linux Mint for over 10 years without ever hopping to something else. And I’m a software engineer, not a casual user.