{"id":589848,"date":"2026-08-19T21:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T21:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/589848\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T21:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T21:08:13","slug":"ai-was-supposed-to-win-people-over-by-now-it-hasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/589848\/","title":{"rendered":"AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite its technological progress, AI\u2019s reputation out in the real world is getting worse. On Wednesday, Axios reported<\/a> that the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to top AI companies warning that U.S. data centers are hurting the party\u2019s chances in a key Ohio election. At the same time, Pew Research released a study<\/a> that found that Americans\u2019 unease about AI is growing \u2014 52% said they\u2019re \u201cmore concerned than excited\u201d about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Pew Research<\/p>\n

A recent CNBC poll<\/a> of 18- to 34-year-olds found that, when given the names of nine top leaders in the AI industry, a majority of the respondents said they don\u2019t trust those people to \u201cact responsibly\u201d when it comes to AI. A May\u00a0Economist\/YouGov<\/a>\u00a0poll found<\/a> that over 70% of\u00a0Americans think AI is advancing too quickly. The list goes on.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:YouGov<\/p>\n

All that discontent is starting to show up on balance sheets. The Wall Street Journal reported this week <\/a>that tech companies are facing a public relations crisis over their plans to build AI data centers across the U.S., leading them to agree to sweeten the deals \u2014 offering job guarantees, clean water investments, and other local perks. (In one case, that even included $50,000 bonuses for teachers<\/a> in a Louisiana parish.)<\/p>\n

The underlying sentiment spanning these stories is that consumers don\u2019t see how AI is making their lives better, but they\u2019re still being asked to absorb the costs. For an industry that has raised hundreds of billions of dollars on the promise of AI\u2019s inevitability, that souring public sentiment is becoming a business problem, not just a PR debacle, and the industry\u2019s own leaders are starting to notice.<\/p>\n

Today, many consumers think of AI in narrower terms, like AI chatbots or AI search experiences (like the now AI-transformed Google<\/a>). They see AI features infiltrating their everyday products, from email<\/a> to TVs<\/a>, whether they wanted them or not. They view AI as a tool that\u2019s helping kids cheat<\/a> in school, including at the college<\/a> level, raising questions about the value of a degree. They hear of AI bots training on piles of intellectual property belonging to others so AI can be used to create art<\/a>, videos<\/a>, music<\/a>, and writing<\/a> \u2014 things that have historically been the output of humans.<\/p>\n

\"AImage Credits:Smith Collection\/Gado \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no shock then that AI appears to be facing more consumer backlash than other transformative technologies did, like the iPhone, the personal computer, or even the internet itself, at similar stages of adoption.<\/p>\n

Yet there are still<\/a> those<\/a> surprised<\/a> by consumers\u2019 reaction. They assumed AI\u2019s adoption would lead to acceptance, and its ubiquity would ultimately have consumers feeling positively about the technology, as it became a part of the vast majority of tech products and services.<\/p>\n

Instead, consumer trends are pointing in the opposite direction. Young people, in particular, are showing interest in adopting retro technology<\/a>, ranging from dumbphones<\/a> to point-and-shoot cameras<\/a> to tape decks<\/a> and CD players<\/a>. AI-free, algorithm-free classic iPods are selling for top dollar on eBay<\/a>. So-called \u201cgrandma hobbies\u201d<\/a> like quilting, knitting, jigsaw puzzles, cards, and games like Mahjong<\/a> are suddenly everywhere. In-person<\/a> meetups and activities<\/a>, like run clubs<\/a>, are winning out over online dating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"VibrantVibrant cassette tapes in yellow, pink, green, blue, and orange, stacked together creating a nostalgic retro backgroundImage Credits:Javier Zayas Photography \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Some in Silicon Valley may think this stems from a messaging problem: that perhaps execs need to explain AI better to consumers, so people can fully understand its benefits. <\/p>\n

The reality, however, could be that consumers understand AI well enough as it is, but don\u2019t think the trade-offs are worth it. When the upside offered isn\u2019t automated jobs with increased pay and reduced workweeks, but instead the threat of job loss, paired with AI features consumers find far less compelling \u2014 things like summarized web pages, or chatty TVs \u2014 that skepticism hardens.<\/p>\n

There are those in the industry waking up to this.<\/p>\n

On a recent podcast,<\/a> Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged that the AI backlash is real, and that it\u2019s largely tied to the fact that the industry isn\u2019t shipping products that \u201cregular people\u201d like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think part of it\u2019s a narrative issue that we\u2019re not talking about AI correctly,\u201d Chesky said. \u201cBut part of it is we need to actually be developing more products that just regular people can use and say, \u2018I love AI because AI allows me to have a doctor on demand and I can\u2019t have that. I can\u2019t afford that.\u2019 And so I think we need more regular things.\u201d<\/p>\n

2\/2 Second, on the messaging around AI.\u00a0 I do not agree that my messaging has been disproportionately negative.\u00a0 In fact it has been about equally balanced between risks and benefits: I\u2019ve written one major essay about each, and even in interviews where I discuss the risks, I\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Dario Amodei (@DarioAmodei) August 15, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the industry\u2019s most prominent leaders, admitted in a post on X this week<\/a> that negative public perception of AI is a \u201cbig problem\u201d that\u2019s fundamentally a \u201ccrisis of trust.\u201d He said people don\u2019t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry, as they \u201csuspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.\u201d<\/p>\n

The solution, he said, was to deliver on AI\u2019s promises \u2014 for example, curing cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven\u2019t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world. That is totally on us,\u201d he noted. <\/p>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite its technological progress, AI\u2019s reputation out in the real world is getting worse. On Wednesday, Axios reported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-589848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}