The newer pronunciation has become popular based on
The newer pronunciation has become popular based on their internalization of the obscure patterns of English pronunciation, informed by the most similar word: “gift” which uses a hard g. Everyone I know of started saying it with a hard g because that’s what made sense based on the spelling, long before hearing the weird thing about constituent words.
Nobody pronounced LASER as Lah-seer, which you’d have to do if you used “A as in Amplification” an “E as in Emission”.