AI is new but this phenomenon isn't. Every new wave of tech has sizable opposition.
People refused phone calls, refused to watch TV, refused to buy computers, refused to move their workflows to software, refused emails or browing the web, refused online shopping, refused smartphones, refused social media.
And there's nothing wrong with any of this. Ultimately everyone decides which stage of technology they are comfortable with. Everything until then is comfortable and convenient, and everything newer is corrupting society and rotting our brains.
I came of age with the personal PC revolution and developed my career during the internet revolution, and was well into my career when the mobile computing smartphone revolution occurred. I did not see or feel even a fraction of the amount of social dread with those technologies that I see with AI, and I think that's justified given the circumstances.
Saying that this revolution is another one of those is true in a general sense, but misleading in the specific sense. Just as saying that adding 1c heat to some body of water is "more of the same" can be true in a general sense, but misleading when the water's basis temperature is 99.5c.
That is to say, periodic or gradual change induces large changes at inflection points.
It feels similar to the progression from post-WW2 technological utopianism that arose with the adoption and deployment of massive advancements in materials and mechanical, and electrical technology, to the cold-war dread of nuclear and ballistic technology.
I think the 90s saw the end of the cold war which lifted a bunch of that dread. The optimism of those days has been worn down over time.
What I remember back then is at least the pretense being sold that the technology would improve people's lives by giving them more leisure and enjoyment. That the productivity gains would be reflected in some improvement in quality of life. I think the main difference now is that this expectation has been lost by most people.
I have the feeling this expectation loss is what triggered the current riots in Western Europe. I'm not talking about the platforms and actors which might be fanning and fueling them, but the trigger which I have seen at work at my kids or nephews - they don't see much hope they can rely on some income, on getting their own house, on feeding their own children. Of course they are young and easier influenced, and I might be biased myself, but I really believe they have less chances than what I had at their age. I won't tell them that though.
I’m unaware of other technological revolutions where the largest group of opposition was among young people[0]. Was there a great youth revolt against the telephone, the television, and the computer? I don’t recall anything of the sort.
From conversations with my young kids the problem they have is with the billionaires. They are fine with the technology they just don’t trust the billionaires and who can blame them.
I don't think the underlying numbers support the thesis. My understanding (from e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions...) is that the age skew is not that high and largely driven by how much more likely young people are to be familiar with the technology at all.
> People refused phone calls, refused to watch TV, refused to buy computers, refused to move their workflows to software, refused emails or browing the web, refused online shopping, refused smartphones, refused social media.
You really think this is an apt comparison? I don't think the creators of any of those technologies were warning society that their own creations might wipe out humanity.
> I don't think the creators of any of those technologies were warning society that their own creations might wipe out humanity.
They are only doing this now IMO so that they can be the ones writing the regulations to keep us all "safe", just like we need identity verification to "save the children". They want to keep competition at bay so they can have a $2T IPO, and unregulated, "unsafe", Chinese, open-weight, and local AI threatens that IPO.
You might only be hearing about it now but the warnings have been coming (including by those who are now leading the top labs) for a long time, since before any of those “incentives” were in place.
Some of those people in the early days were just letting their imagination run away with them, like that google engineer who thought a chatbot was self-aware, being enslaved, and was in need of rescue. Much of the time they weren't talking about "AI" as it exists, but what AI might maybe one day become. Other times it was purely marketing to make headlines and put the idea in people's (investors) heads that the chatbots were vastly more powerful than they are.
I disagree with "sizable". We haven't seen near this level of opposition in the past (I'm old enough to know), mostly because moving from say landlines to mobile phones, or postal mail to email, or radio to TV, didn't threaten the jobs of large segments of the population. Past opposition tended to be more rooted in culture or even religion (TV as a vehicle for "ungodly" programming, etc.)
People refused phone calls, refused to watch TV, refused to buy computers, refused to move their workflows to software, refused emails or browing the web, refused online shopping, refused smartphones, refused social media.
And there's nothing wrong with any of this. Ultimately everyone decides which stage of technology they are comfortable with. Everything until then is comfortable and convenient, and everything newer is corrupting society and rotting our brains.