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.
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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.
I think the online rhetoric around AI has been way more apocalyptic than the more vague and abstract political stuff. So Trump raped some kids, that’s really bad but that’s not something people feel the need to go out and risk their lives over.
But data centers are going to steal all your water and there will be killbots patrolling the streets? All jobs will be taken away and everyone will be reduced to serfs or killed as surplus population? Drum that into a sufficiently mentally fragile subset of the population long and hard enough and you’ll get them worked up enough to feel like they need to strike first.
its sickening that the billionaires could just openly reveal all the horrifying things they do to people and no one would care, but only if things directly affect your personal life people care even a little. They could livestream themselves cannibalizing a live child and it wouldnt cause anything but momentary outrage that maybe lasts a bit longer than average.
Its good that people are rising up against this shit because all the negatives are true, but at the same time i have started to feel we really dont deserve good things.
L take
It’s a fact AI is effectively stealing water supplies, FaceDeer. Don’t be so glib about it.
And the extreme rhetoric comes from the industries themselves, including Sam Altman’s own mealy mouth. And from industry shills who get good money to pretend that the thing is powerful and dangerous and worth investing in. Yudkowsky, Hinton, etc.