Tech backlash reaches fever pitch as AI angst collides with social media fears
CNBC · C · trust 49/100
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Silicon Valley's technology leaders have long dreamed of making the world a better place. But now more than ever, Americans say they're living in a tech-induced nightmare.
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence giants like OpenAI and Anthropic has exacerbated a deep malaise toward the tech sector, especially among people who have come to associate AI with job loss and now see outsized data centers rising up in their backyards. The last generation of technology, meanwhile, ushered in a cohort of social media apps that proved so addictive that Meta agreed to fork over up to $17 billion as part of a landmark settlement this week.
At a time of stubbornly high inflation that's pushed consumer confidence to a seven-month low, Americans are looking up to see tech's trillion-dollar companies getting bigger and more powerful, all while being led by some of the wealthiest people on the planet.
"If this technology takes off in the way that you see the CEOs of AI Labs talking about, we're facing a significant impact to our economy, to people's jobs, to their sense of agency," Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of research firm AI Now Institute, told CNBC in an interview. "There are lots of members of the public that don't want to see that vision roll out."
More than half of Americans say they're more concerned than excited about the growing use of AI in daily life, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. That's up from 37% in 2021. And in a poll earlier this year, the Searchlight Institute found that the overwhelming majority of voters believe social media has a negative impact on society.
Confidence in AI executives is even more dismal, according to a CNBC Generation Lab survey of 18- to 34-year-olds. More than 75% of respondents said they don't trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly, while around 70% of respondents expressed those views about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg .
The public's mounting disdain toward the tech sector could prove to be especially challenging for Anthropic and OpenAI, which are both valued at nearly $1 trillion and are gearing up for potentially historic IPOs . Those offerings could mint a number of fresh billionaires and scores of millionaires. AI backlash is expected to appear as a key risk factor in Anthropic's IPO prospectus, as CNBC previously reported .
In a post on X earlier this month, Amodei acknowledged that the public has a negative view of AI, and he said Anthropic and other companies will have to deliver on their promises to improve people's lives. "I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust," Amodei wrote. "I think that ordinary people don't trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. The causes of this go back decades and AI is just the latest iteration of it."
Experts told CNBC that backlash against the tech sector is reaching new heights, and that the widespread angst is drowning out conversations about its potential benefits, particularly in regards to AI. Companies have to go beyond a charm offensive, they say.
"Treating it as a PR problem and a problem of public sentiment would be tremendously misguided," West said. "To improve public sentiment requires really meaningfully contending with where the public is at and what they want in a more meaningful way than just, 'Can we convince you to get on board?'"
AI data centers, the large facilities that house the hardware for training and running AI models, have become a particularly sore subject , serving as a physical manifestation of the widespread anger toward AI.
During the first quarter of this year, around $130 billion worth of data center projects were blocked or delayed due to local opposition, according to a report from Data Center Watch . In just three months, that figure neared the roughly $156 billion worth of facilities that were disrupted during all of 2025.
As backlash against the facilities has mounted, groups like the Stop Data Centers Coalition have been pushing for a national moratorium on new projects to give lawmakers and the public time to more closely examine their environmental, societal and economic impacts.
Emily Wurth, organizing director for Food and Water Watch, said data center concerns cut across a number of issues, including water use, higher utility bills, emissions increases, noise pollution and the potential that the facilities are "taking over agricultural land."
In parts of Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, she said she's seen "hundreds of people showing up to speak out and oppose these projects."
"I think it likely caught companies and legislators by surprise," she said.
The outrage has spilled into the tech workforce. Amazon engineers testified at a Seattle City Council meeting in June to call for greater government regulation of AI data centers, and criticized the company's use of "dirty energy" at some sites.
"There's not a lot of trust necessarily in the utilities and the regulators, given the higher electricity prices that we've seen over previous years," James Coleman, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota, told CNBC in an interview.
Sentiment isn't universally negative. Jennifer Huddleston, senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, said in an interview that "many unions are coming out in favor of data centers, not only because of the initial construction boom, but also the electricians and HVAC" professionals that are in demand "once they're built."
The so-called hyperscalers responsible for much of the building boom say they're responding to insatiable demand from businesses and consumers for their services, many of which are enabling critical…
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