This spring, a certain sound has become commonplace at college graduations: the low rumble of jeers that reverberates throughout a stadium whenever a tech executive brings up artificial intelligence. It took place in Arizona. It has also occurred in other places. That response at a commencement ceremony would have seemed unimaginable a few years ago. These days, it hardly ever makes news on its own.
This is due to the fact that the booing is merely the courteous tip of a much bigger iceberg. Residents of Detroit have demonstrated at utility meetings with signs demanding to know who is actually footing the bill for the electricity that a proposed data center would use. A city councilor in Indianapolis reportedly woke up to gunfire outside his house and a note mentioning data centers. These are not isolated complaints. They resemble the early contours of a movement more and more.
The speed at which the mood has changed is remarkable. Earnings calls, chip shortages, and the occasional ethics panel were the main stories surrounding AI in Silicon Valley not too long ago. These days, it’s a kitchen-table issue that appears in zoning disputes, local elections, and, in less common but more concerning instances, schemes against the industry’s own executives and buildings. Extremism researchers claim to be witnessing something truly novel emerge: AI as a unifying grievance among groups that would otherwise have very little in common.
Why this backlash is spreading more quickly than previous tech anxiety waves is worth considering. Many people were suspicious when personal computers first appeared in the 1990s, but things took time to change, retrain, or just become accustomed to them. The adoption of AI has felt different—rushed, forceful, and almost impatient with the public’s capacity to catch up. People haven’t had much opportunity to develop resilience before the next disruption occurs.
Beneath all of this, job anxiety appears to be genuine, and not only to external critics. Some AI industry founders have even begun to publicly state this. The founder of the chatbot startup Replika, Eugenia Kuyda, has stated unequivocally that she anticipates “crazy protests” related to job losses, pointing out that her own startup has quietly stopped hiring for entry-level positions because junior employees have become more difficult to justify financially. That’s a noteworthy admission—not from a labor economist, but from someone whose company depends on the success of AI.
There is disagreement within the industry regarding the true state of the labor market. Even as AI spending reaches record highs, Jensen Huang of Nvidia has vigorously refuted the doom narrative by pointing to low unemployment and consistent job openings. Regarding the total figures, he might be correct. However, the discrepancy between macro confidence and micro fear is likely contributing more to these protests than any one statistic could. Aggregate numbers rarely provide solace to someone who recently lost a particular job due to a particular piece of software.
Here, history provides an unsettling parallel. The Luddites were watching machines take the place of their real means of subsistence, and in response, they were smashing the machines rather than responding to abstract fears. The echo is difficult to ignore. It is genuinely unclear whether today’s protests—town halls, ballot measures, jeers at graduations—remain largely nonviolent or veer closer to the kind of violence that investigators have already identified in a few instances.
The difference between how AI executives discuss the future and how regular workers are living in the present appears to have widened to the point where it is noticeable from the cheap seats. It might end up being more important to the industry’s reputation to close it, or at least narrow it, than any upcoming product launch.
