AI Backlash is Growing

And not from where you would expect it.

44 percent of polled Gen Z workers said they’re “sabotaging their company’s AI strategy in at least one way,”

Blogger Gary Marcus says that practically every day he sees new signs that backlash against AI is growing.

For example an Alabama Tribune headline says “AI-Powered High School Scrapped After Protests Erupt Against It”.

There is also QuitGPT, which calls itself the first true consumer-driven, social-political movement against AI.

quitGPT says CHATGPT IS TRUMP’S BIGGEST DONOR AND ICE USES CHATGPT. IT’S TIME TO QUIT.

— JOIN THE BOYCOTT.

Fortune reported on this last summer. Marcus says that public backlash against AI will be so strong by 2028 that anti-AI sentiment will probably be a major factor in the 2028 US Presidential election. Greed, overhype and recklessness have screwed it up.

Frustration with AI may even be a factor in the midterms. It’s already splitting both parties.

While Marcus says there are positives to AI, he says it is a net negative:

GenAI has been undermining secondary and college education, opening up mass surveillance, increasing disinformation, delusions, impersonation, phishing, and other forms of cybercrime, nonconsensual deep fake porn, bias in employment and other domains, and economic disparity, drowning the world in slop and unwanted, over-leveraged environment-damaging data centers that risk causing a recession.

Simultaneously it has empowered a bunch of people who want to privatize almost all the gains while leave all the downsides to society, taking almost zero responsibility.

I don’t think we are better off than we were four years ago.

I don’t think there is any way to stop the AI bulldozer, but that doesn’t mean that people are necessarily drink the Cool-Aid.

Credit: Gary Marcus

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