GoKawiilJust take a second and scan these headlines. You’ve probably seen many more just like them.
You’re also perhaps familiar with the gist of what that they describe: Americans overwhelmingly hate data centers. They overwhelmingly dislike Flock surveillance cameras. And now it seems they overwhelmingly despise Meta’s newest product, AI-infused Ray Bans that have been widely termed “pervert glasses,” too. Enveloping all of the above trends is a general, percolating dislike of Silicon Valley’s marquee pursuit, generative AI; a sentiment underscored, again, by a slate of recent polls.
(I will note that, if you’ve been reading this newsletter, you’ve been well aware of each of these trends for many, many months at this point.)
Here are a couple more headlines, for good measure:
A grand jury refused to indict a man caught destroying Flock surveillance equipment on camera. Data center and Flock protestors are cheered as heroes, and finding viral fame. Grifty content farms have sprung up to churn out anti-tech memes because the genre is so popular.
It’s almost funny to think back to the mild wave of public consternation and Congressional wrist-slapping that pundits termed “the techlash” in the heady days of the first Trump administration, over concerns of disinformation on Facebook and social media, compared to what we’re seeing now. That is, a genuine, sustained demonstration of rage at some of the modern tech industry’s key aims.
And all of this has become so clear, so palpable, and so widespread that it’s apparently causing tech industry leadership and pro-AI policy wonks to enter either a state of denial or something more akin to fevered delusion.
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Back in the spring, when a series of anti-AI and anti-data center actions caught national attention, many in the industry reacted with what was at least surface-level contrition. They were taken aback by the magnitude of the outrage, and some lamented that AI companies and executives had failed to issue positive messages for their products, so most Americans didn’t know how useful and good AI could be.
Ultimately, the industry decided not to change much of anything at all, whether the messaging—not that I think it would have mattered much—or the approach to their business in general, and, surprise, opposition to data centers has continued to spread.
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