How do you defeat them? Whenever I see one coming, it usually means death no matter what I do. Is there a way to force the AI to use them less often as an air to air weapon? Should I just quit and jump into another helicopter?

I think it is very difficult. You have the possibility to go (very quicly!) behind an hill, inside a canyon or under a bridge to avoid the laser spot. Usually a laser missle is certain death... I don't know about the AI forcing.

You can avoid the láser missiles doing a hard maniouvre. You can see some vídeos on youtube, type "apache from eech 1.16" or "from eech". There are 10 videos were you can see how to avoid láser missiles.

One would think laser jamming would be a thing in the game. Laser guided missiles are so effective that I rarely carry stingers or iglas for dealing with choppers.

The only other thing I can think of is try to get them to do a hard maneuver to break the lock like dealing with SARH missiles in jet flight simulators.

The problem goes double in the Mi-28 where you don't even have a radar warning receiver because no one has made it functional. Your copilot will tell you a missile is inbound, but not what type.