Public resistance to artificial intelligence has moved well beyond opinion polls and the industry is only beginning to reckon with what that means.
Something unusual happened at two university graduation ceremonies this spring. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage at the University of Arizona to talk about AI’s future and was booed before he could finish. Days earlier, UCF speaker Gloria Caulfield faced the same response after calling AI “the next Industrial Revolution.” These were not isolated hecklers. They were a sign of something much broader.
That broader shift has, in extreme cases, turned physical. A man threw a molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home, then allegedly headed to OpenAI’s headquarters threatening to burn the building down. Social media posts applauding the attack gathered thousands of likes. These remain isolated incidents, but researchers who study political violence say they may not stay that way.
A Bipartisan Anxiety
What makes the current backlash distinctive is how little it follows conventional political lines. Bernie Sanders recently wrote that
“AI oligarchs do not want to just replace specific jobs. They want to replace workers.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, made near-identical remarks, saying Silicon Valley does “not care about the little guy.” As The Atlantic noted, this emergent “Bernie-to-Bannon” coalition points to a genuinely bipartisan anxiety – one that polling confirms. The United States ranks among the countries most concerned about AI globally, a striking position for the world’s foremost AI developer.
The 2026 Stanford AI Index found that only 38% of Americans now view AI positively, the lowest the report has ever recorded. A Gallup poll found just 18% of young Americans feel hopeful about AI. Over 70% of all Americans believe the technology is moving too fast, per Economist/YouGov, a view shared by 68% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats.
Among Americans earning under $50,000 a year, 56% fear AI will replace jobs their families depend on. Stanford law professor and AI expert Nathaniel Persily put it plainly:
“Disruption has winners and losers. For many Americans, they’re not convinced they’re going to be the winners, and they base that conclusion on the history of technology over the last 20 years.”
Communities Are Blocking the Infrastructure
The most tangible front in this conflict is physical infrastructure. AI requires data centers, large facilities with significant energy and water demands and communities are increasingly saying no to them.
Energy analyst Robert Bryce documented at least 70 US communities that imposed restrictions on or rejected data center projects between 2021 and early 2026. A record number of projects were cancelled in Q1 2026 alone. Maine passed the country’s first statewide data center moratorium, though the governor vetoed it. At least 12 other states have filed similar legislation.
In Festus, Missouri, voters removed every councillor who approved a $6 billion data center. In Port Washington, Wisconsin, residents passed what is reportedly the first referendum of its kind, requiring public approval before tax incentives can be granted for projects of this scale. A guide called “How to Stop a Data Center,” written by a community group in Michigan, notes that demonstrating outside local officials’ homes has proven an effective organising tactic.
Morgan Stanley warned clients that “public pushback is emerging as a binding constraint” on AI infrastructure. Jefferies told investors these battles were “sapping confidence” in the sector.
Data centers are, as The Atlantic observed, more tangible than AI software. Someone who opposes the industry may not be able to stop Anthropic from building Claude, but they can raise concerns at a local city council meeting and increasingly, they are.
Could It Get Worse?
Researchers are warning that the current situation could escalate. Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, a researcher who studies technology and terrorism, wrote last month that AI “generates the structural conditions historically associated with the onset of political violence.”
The Soufan Center, a nonpartisan research group, has documented a rise in direct threats against individuals, policymakers, and corporations involved with AI, the most common involving physical sabotage of data centers. Local officials are seen as especially vulnerable: “Where national figures are unreachable, local policymakers who approved the data center become the proxies for the same structural anger,” Veilleux-Lepage wrote. Following the Indianapolis shooting, the city council introduced a measure allowing officials to keep their home addresses private.
The AI industry’s own historical comparisons may be part of the problem. Silicon Valley often likens AI to the Industrial Revolution. What those comparisons tend to omit is that living through industrialisation was, for many people, a period of stagnating wages, deteriorating conditions, and growing inequality, conditions that led to riots and attacks on industrialists. As The Atlantic noted, automation was not the only issue then; inflation and food prices compounded the anger, and machines became a target for people experiencing financial hardship more broadly. The parallel to today, persistent inflation, high energy costs and a technology promising sweeping change, is not hard to draw.
An Industry Recalibrating Its Message
Silicon Valley is aware of the problem. Tech insiders have been exchanging advice on how to better communicate AI’s benefits. Andreessen Horowitz published an essay declaring the “job apocalypse” to be a “baseless fantasy.” Sam Altman, who told The Atlantic’s Ross Andersen in 2023 that “jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop,” has more recently written that “jobs doomerism is likely long-term wrong.”
Companies are also investing in goodwill. Anthropic committed $200 million with the Gates Foundation for programmes in health, education, and agriculture in lower-income countries. OpenAI struck a deal with Malta to give every citizen free ChatGPT Plus access after completing an AI literacy course. Meanwhile, investment continues to pour into cleaner energy for data centers: Fervo Energy surged 33% on its IPO, crossing a $10 billion market cap, and X-energy raised $1 billion in an oversubscribed nuclear offering.
But as The Atlantic observed, “if the tech industry truly believes that a simple change in messaging will quell the backlash, then they are misunderstanding the problem entirely.” Most Americans already feel the economy is structured to benefit the wealthy. One poll found that the group most optimistic about AI in their daily lives are households earning over $200,000 a year. With OpenAI and Anthropic both approaching trillion-dollar valuations, the gap between who benefits and who bears the disruption is not a perception problem, it is a structural one.
Senator Mark Warner, speaking at a conference in March, said he is “enormously concerned” that “populism from both the left and the right” could curb AI innovation. That concern is understandable. But the more immediate question may be whether an industry moving at this speed can build the public trust it needs before the backlash moves further from the ballot box and the city council chamber.
Sources:
- The Atlantic — The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly by Lila Shroff (May 13, 2026) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/
- Bernard Marr — The Growing AI Backlash: Is The Revolution Over Before It’s Even Begun? (February 17, 2026) https://bernardmarr.com/the-growing-ai-backlash-is-the-revolution-over-before-its-even-begun/
- Fortune — A councilmember backed a data center project. Then 13 bullets and a ‘No Data Centers’ note hit his home (April 7, 2026) https://www.fortune.com/2026/04/07/indianapolis-councilmember-ai-data-center-backlash
- deeplearning.ai / The Batch — Public Opposition to Construction of Data Centers in the U.S. Has Spurred Political Action and Violence https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/public-opposition-to-construction-of-new-data-centers-in-the-u-s-has-spurred-political-action-and-violence
- Stanford AI Index 2026 https://aiindex.stanford.edu/report/
- Soufan Center https://thesoufancenter.org
- Robert Bryce / The Data Center Backlash (documentary + tracker) https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/the-data-center-backlash
- Lawfare Media — How AI Data Centers Are Shaping Politics (April 8, 2026) https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-ai-data-centers-are-shaping-politics
