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A bulk of Americans really hate AI \u2014\u00a0and many AI CEOs can\u2019t quite grasp why.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a serious mismatch between public sentiment and corporate excitement over AI. Companies continue to AI-wash layoffs and jam the tech into every corner of their products, yet research keeps finding that Americans are opposed to rampant AI expansion: according to one recent Economist\/YouGov poll<\/a>, a staggering 70 percent of Americans think that AI is \u201cmoving too fast,\u201d and about 64 percent believe it\u2019s unlikely that the general population will ever reap future economic benefits of the tech.<\/p>\n Yet no one seems to be more confused<\/a> than the makers of the tech themselves. Back in January, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lamented<\/a> on a podcast that the AI backlash\u00a0has been \u201cextremely hurtful,\u201d blaming pushback on \u201cdoomers\u201d pushing a negative \u201cnarrative\u201d of AI. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman observed in an X post<\/a> last fall that there are \u201cso many cynics,\u201d and that it \u201ccracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming.\u201d And in February, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared<\/a> that \u201clooking at what\u2019s possible,\u201d in his view, public embrace \u201cdoes feel sort of surprisingly slow.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Axios\u2019 Madison Mills<\/a>, tech CEOs have also privately conveyed their bafflement.<\/p>\n \u201cIn previous conversations with Axios, AI executives at multiple frontier AI labs were surprised by the negative opinions,\u201d Mills writes. \u201cThey see AI as just as inevitable as the rise of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n And some, apparently, are in outright denial, with Superhuman Mail CEO Rahul Vohra \u2014\u00a0whose company is currently facing a class action lawsuit<\/a> over an \u201cexpert\u201d editing feature that plundered the likenesses of countless journalists, scientists, and famous dead people without their consent \u2014\u00a0that Superhuman doesn\u2019t \u201creally see\u201d the negative polling.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fascinating split-screen, and it\u2019s impossible to untangle AI\u2019s image issues from the rhetoric of AI industry leaders themselves<\/a>, many of whom have talked extensively about the grave risk of AI-enabled human extinction. And the more hypothetical disaster scenarios aside, the public is also already feeling the more tangible AI risks<\/a>: air pollution from xAI\u2019s massive data center<\/a> in Memphis; the ongoing battle over the mass use of copyrighted works<\/a> to train AI models; AI-tied job loss<\/a>; worsening scams<\/a>, disinformation<\/a>, and abuse material<\/a>; novel cybersecurity risks<\/a>; and the life-altering<\/a> \u2014\u00a0and in some cases, deadly<\/a> \u2014\u00a0mental breakdowns tied to some consumers\u2019 intensive use of sycophantic AI chatbots.<\/p>\n Whereas AI CEOs tend to operate in between the extremes of AI-fueled utopia and total AI apocalypse, the public is living in the reality of current consumer-facing AI tools\u2019 ability and impact. It\u2019s hard to sell people on a future AI-powered paradise when the everyday reality instead feels dystopian.<\/p>\n