I'd assume the layman user already suffering from cookie pop-up fatigue won't pay much attention to these privacy toggles.

I think it's just general lack of awareness of the effect, or in many instances having alternate economic incentives, like academics who want to commoditize their intellectual outputs to all available distribution channels. Tyler Cowen for example. The AI companies are in a race to the bottom.

I always assumed the folks who intentionally do this either work for the company, are associated with the company, or are in some way part of q/a pilot user group.

It's opt-out. So if you missed that change you share your data without knowing it.