For the tech of the future, generative AI sure is making a lot of enemies in a very short time.
If 2023 was the year of AI’s awakening and 2024 the year of its frantic adoption, then it’s safe to say 2025 will be remembered as the year it all came crashing back down to reality. From boardrooms to classrooms, from game studios to Senate committees, this will be the year many remember as the one when AI finally wore out its welcome.
For many small towns throughout the US, the AI boom has come wafting in on a cloud of noxious smog that critics say is leading to to increased cancer risk and hostile takeovers of local infrastructure, not to mention skyrocketing electricity bills. That being the case, it’s no surprise a huge number of rural communities have spent the year organizing and agitating to shut down the tech industry’s data center projects wherever they pop up.
Indeed, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest, it seems the one thing people can agree on is that the data centers powering the AI gold rush make horrible neighbors.
Beyond the data centers, AI is helping corporations increase the rate at which they exploit workers — both on the job and at home. Back in spring, for example, Visa announced plans to let AI agents loose on customers’ financial information, one of many companies to experiment with a pivot to AI customer service.
Of course, most Americans would rather bash their heads against the wall then talk to an AI customer service agent — not that there’s much of a difference, they’d argue — as consumer sentiment surveys show. The hatred is so palpable that Americans have even taken to accusing human customer service agents of being AI when they don’t get their way.
Corporate big wigs aren’t the only ones getting fat off the AI boom, to be sure. With newfound tools to pump out ultra-realistic content at an industrial scale, Facebook scammers, art forgers, and racist influencers are also getting in on the fun.
This kind of wild west approach has fueled a rise in protest movements like Pause AI, a group calling for a halt of AI development until we can figure out what the hell is going on. 2025 even gave us our first anti-AI hunger strikes, spontaneous protests by activists in San Francisco and London. Others have risen up against AI-powered surveillance dragnets powered by companies like Flock Safety.
Amidst the outcry, a handful of politicians in the US seem to have taken notice. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently kicked off a campaign calling for a pause on the “unregulated sprint to develop and deploy AI.” He’s joined in his crusade by New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who recently blasted Republican legislators for their attempts to pass a 10-year ban on state regulation of AI.
Though the two progressive lawmakers might not have much support from their Democratic colleagues, they’re joined by divisive right-wing figures like Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who have defied their own Republican party in voicing opposition to AI initiatives.
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