Anti-AI sentiment surged over the last year as the hype surrounding the tech showed no signs of slowing down. Industry’s obsession with the tech has driven up electricity bills, been used to justify mass layoffs, and even helped the US military determine where to drop bombs on Iran.
It’s also quickly become an insufferable and practically inescapable part of everyday life, minting plenty of critics who range from average Americans to top AI researchers.
The backlash is enormous. According to a new national survey conducted by NBC News, AI is viewed even more negatively than the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the militarized agency that has been embroiled in major controversy over its brutal deportation program, including the fatal shooting of unarmed civilians.
According to the poll, only 26 percent of 1,000 registered voter respondents said they viewed AI positively, while a far bigger proportion of 46 percent viewed it negatively. In total, AI’s net favorability rating stands at a dismal negative 20 points.
Only the Democratic Party and Iran scored more negatively than AI, while ICE and Donald Trump scored slightly less terribly, with -18 and -12 points, respectively.
The shocking results once again highlight major disillusionment surrounding AI, an indictment underlining a growing schism between the excitement felt by company leaders and the quickly waning enthusiasm of their employees, who are being told to use the tech often against their will — potentially making their own roles redundant.
The optics of the Department of Defense employing AI to select targets in their bombing of Iran is certainly not helping, although it remains unclear how much the subject played a role for the poll respondents. The survey was conducted between February 27 and March 3, a date range that includes the beginning of Trump’s war on Iran. (That could also help explain Iran’s abysmal favorability rating of -53 points.)
Anthropic’s high-profile fight with the Department of Defense over where to draw the lines of ethical AI use in warfare, which culminated in the company suing the Pentagon today, also kicked off late last month in the days leading up to the start of the war.
Despite the pushback, Silicon Valley leaders and the Trump administration believe that AI represents the future. Tech giants continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into vast AI data center buildouts, which themselves have proven unpopular.
Besides allegedly skyrocketing energy bills, residents living near these facilities have been dealing with unbearable noise from gas-powered turbines brought in to cool the powerful AI chips.
More on AI sentiment: The Rage at OpenAI Has Grown So Immense That There Are Entire Protests Against It
