Why the tech industry can't keep up with the AI backlash

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This is a column about AI. My fiancé works at Anthropic. See my full ethics disclosure here.<br>On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published an op-ed repeating his call for a new international body to govern artificial intelligence safety. “International co-operation like this seems a reasonable way to avoid power becoming too concentrated, and ensure that the benefits of AI are democratized,” Altman wrote in the Financial Times.<br>Altman’s proposal is sensible, and one that builds on his years-old call for something like an International Atomic Energy Agency for AI. Reading his essay, though, I imagined the people of the world asking themselves: what benefits?<br>Three and a half years after the launch of ChatGPT, the initial wonder that the world first felt about all-knowing answer boxes has increasingly curdled into anger, anxiety, and organized opposition. Tech giants have begun to confront the backlash directly, but the list of AI-generated headaches continues to grow. The Economist put a robot with a spear through its head on this week’s cover, warning: “The AI backlash is only getting started.”<br>By now the public opposition to data centers is well known. In May, a Gallup survey found that 71% of Americans are somewhat or strongly opposed to a data center being built in their area — compared to 53% who feel the same way about nuclear power plants. And public sentiment has put an increasingly hard brake on the AI industry’s construction plans. Last month, an analysis by Data Center Watch found that opposition delayed or blocked at least 75 US data center projects worth $130 billion in the first quarter of 2026. The number of organized groups opposing the projects doubled to 833 in 49 states.<br>In part the opposition is a testament to the enduring power of American NIMBYism. You might not be able to get your local member of Congress to do anything for you, but you can almost certainly delay the construction of almost anything in your town without much trouble.<br>If some of the early complaints about data centers amounted to misinformation — complaints about water use have often been overstated — data centers have legitimate negative externalities that tech giants have only recently begun to address. There are the electricity bill hikes to local ratepayers; there are tax breaks that reduce funding for other government services; there are greenhouse gas emissions; there are constant infrasonic vibrations leading to “chronic sleep deprivation and insomnia, headaches, internal ear pressure and anxiety.”<br>Unless you happen to live within a few miles of a data center, though — or are one of the incumbents who might lose your seat over your support for them — so far it’s been easy to think of the issue as something that’s happening to other people.<br>But a primary anxiety behind the opposition to data centers has been economic — the reasonable fear that AI will eliminate or significantly change your job. And that fear has begun to materialize for lots of Americans whether they live near a data center or not.<br>The extent to which AI threatens jobs is one of the most-debated questions of 2026 so far, and data on the subject is decidedly mixed. (Something we’ve covered extensively on the Platformer podcast.)<br>It’s clear that there’s no AI jobs crisis now; hiring exceeded expectations in May, and the unemployment rate has held steady at a low 4.3% for the past three months. Layoffs often have multiple causes, and “AI washing” — where CEOs blame cuts on the technology in hopes that they will be rewarded by the stock market — is a real phenomenon. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has attributed much of the recent rise in unemployment among young college graduates to the rise of remote work.<br>But enough warning signs are blinking yellow that there is reason to worry. AI is now the leading reason cited for job cuts in the technology industry, where adoption is the strongest.<br>And last week, a team led by Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson released new payroll data across 4.6 million workers in 730 occupations. It found new evidence for an oft-voiced fear that AI is reducing opportunities for junior employees. Among workers 22 to 25 in jobs considered highly exposed to AI, employment is now shrinking by 3.8% a year.<br>The overall effects remain small: AI-exposed jobs shrank 0.2% year over year, while the least-exposed jobs grew 0.1%. But Americans can be forgiven for extrapolating these trends out a few years and worrying about what it means for them. Nearly two-thirds believe AI will lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years, according to the Stanford AI Index. Only 5% believe it will lead to more jobs.<br>Meanwhile, workers might find the best evidence for looming disruption at their own workplace. Study after study has found that executives are more excited about AI than their employees. Would they really be so excited if they did not believe that it could...