I think it’s not even about low stress, but low barrier to entry. There are plenty of things I’d rather be doing than software development (in fact I never planned on going into this field professionally), but I just can’t.

I’m also not surprised by the “The number of candidates applying with claimed ML/AI experience who haven’t done anything more than follow online tutorials is wild”. Just go look at any Ask HN thread about “how do I get into ML/AI”. This is pretty typical advice. Hell it’s pretty typical advice given to people asking how to get into any domain. Now sure we’ll how it works outside of bog standard web development though.