My experience as a mature student has been similar, I've had a couple of people in group projects try to use AI and get resoundingly mocked for it by the rest of the group. Which was kinda vindicating.
Watching the uni policy on it evolve over the last couple years has been interesting. For a while individual unit heads would just have their own policies so it ranged from "AI = insta-fail" to "you can use AI to help with phrasing in your writing but provide examples of how".
Now the uni seems to have settled on a cohesive policy of not allowing it for writing, but encouraging its use for summarising articles before reading them to determine relevancy, or rubber ducking your own work.
Just lurk there for a while. IMO, biggest misconception is that they're omnicidal lunatics. They have a lot of in-jokes and bits that seem incomprehensible and border on unhinged to an outsider, and sometimes they kinda lean in to the perception. But if you spend enough time there you realise they're very intelligent and deeply empathetic people. The "unlimited genocide on the first world" rhetoric is an expression of frustration rather than actual intent.