cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/42715642
The middle distribution of Gen Z’s feelings about AI range from apprehension to downright hatred. Despite the fact that more than half of Gen Z living in the U.S. uses AI regularly, according to a recently released Gallup poll, less than a fifth feel hopeful about the technology. About a third says the technology makes them angry. And nearly half say it makes them afraid.
Gallup’s own senior education researcher, Zach Hrynowski, blamed the bad vibes at least partially on the dwindling job market. The oldest Zoomers, he told Axios, are the angriest, as they are “acutely aware” of the ability of a technology to transform cultural norms without a second thought, unlike a Gen Xer who is trained to see new technology as toys and are still “playing around with AI.”
Indeed, job prospects for the recently graduated Gen Z are abysmal; Bloomberg just reported that 43% of young graduates are “underemployed,” meaning taking on jobs that require less education than they have.
[…]
This is not just a Gen Z problem, either. In the American heartland, data centers are being proposed at a pace that local communities never anticipated and for which they were never asked permission, and they’re increasingly pushing back.
The numbers are serious. According to a report from 10a Labs’ Data Center Watch, at least $18 billion worth of data center projects have been blocked and another $46 billion delayed over the past two years owing to local opposition. At least 142 activist groups across 24 states are now actively organizing to block data center construction and expansion. A Heatmap Pro review of public records found that 25 data center projects were canceled following local pushback in 2025 alone, four times as many as in 2024, with 21 of those cancellations occurring in the second half of the year as electricity costs grew.
The concerns driving this resistance are less about existential AI risk and more about typical kitchen-table complaints; communities consistently cite higher utility bills, water consumption, noise, impacts on property values, and green space destruction as their primary objections. Water use is mentioned as a top concern in more than 40% of contested projects, according to a Heatmap Pro review of public records.
allegedly hurled an incendiary device at the gate of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s $27 million home, igniting a fire at the exterior gate. No one was injured
At the gate? Jesus, it was just a nonviolent symbolic act.
He has plenty of options if he doesn’t want it to happen again:
- Open source OpenAI and give away his billions.
- Guillotine.
Use AI regularly
Dude, you literally can’t search online without it being forced onto you. AI has literally made the internet a hell hole. Once very well refined search algorithms have been (1) replaced with AI slop results or (2) been made useless because all websites have been filled with slop. So even if you’re using a search engine without AI it is infected from the slop all over the internet.
We have literally broken a once amazing resource. Likely forever
I switched to Kagi very recently bc they at least flag AI slop sites so you can easily avoid and block them. They have that ai summary shit but you can just toggle it off. Still wish they didn’t have it at all or that there was a level that didn’t include any ai features. It’s so refreshing having an actual functioning search engine again
I have hope that well get some sort of search engine that blacklists websites if they use AI content.
AI datasets can’t even exclude AI content for training new models. It’s a fundamental problem with AI actually. The models are getting worse as more of the data that is collected to train them is not on human created datasets but on previous AI slop that fills the internet.
Basically, this is essentially impossible. AI has literally infected the Internet like a cancer.
Yup. And on duckduckgo you need to use a whole different URL to avoid it.
And with Microsoft products, there’s that damn copilot button in like 7 places everywhere all the time screaming “USE ME, JUSTIFY MY EXPENSIVE EXISTENCE!”. So fucking annoying. I mostly don’t use it out of spite at this point.
He speed strokes just the tip. What a gentleman.
Why the working class so mad? All they want to do is replace everyone with robots. Think of all the free time you’ll have to spend with friends and family, once you’re laid off. /s
we’ll all be well-fed artists!
Dunno if this allowed, but one small bit of resistance I do is use Pagebound. It’s similar (but better) to Goodreads but it’s staunchly anti AI. That if you read a lot, like me
It’s an interesting strategy to infuriate the generation most primed to be a user of AI by using that to make it near impossible for them to get a job because of AI.
Feels like an excellent way to radicalize an entire generation against your product.
They really do seem to be going all in on AI and not leaving any escape routes for if it fails to actually enable an Elysium style future.
The working class isn’t their target audience. They are selling AI to other companies with the promise that AI will be able to increase their profits by replacing expensive and needy meatbag workers.
The AI companies’ goal is to siphon wealth away from other businesses, and the other businesses’ goal is to accumulate wealth by siphoning it away from workers. It will grind the economy to a halt once the lower class can’t afford to spend money anymore while they hoard their wealth. With the way things are going right now, the next step after that will be living in a technofedualist dystopia ruled by the few ultra-wealthy who invested in private compounds and armed militias.
We should be praying for the AI bubble to burst before AI can start succeeding in eliminating workers.
Though shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.
Is that Bhutlerian Jihad stuff from Dune, or… What is that? I know I recognize it from something I’ve Rea read.
