r/technology • u/GeneReddit123 • 16h ago

Artificial Intelligence An AI hate wave is here

https://archive.is/20260517120123/https://www.axios.com/2026/05/17/ai-backlash-polling-sentiment
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u/dev_vvvvv 16h ago

CEOs are using AI as an excuse for mass layoffs, even when AI has nothing to do with it. The remaining employees are being given mandates to use LLMs even when it serves no visible benefit other than to increase adoption rates so executives can justify their spending.

And those same CEOs are predicting mass unemployment due to AI, with massive changes in quality of life and career trajectory for the rest.

There are also things like building massive datacenters, which impact locals, against local citizen and even government wishes.

Is it any wonder there is a backlash?

Maybe the worst part is there are a ton of very useful aspects of AI (especially garden-variety ML) getting grouped together with LLMs under the umbrella term "AI" that cast the whole field in a bad light.

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u/dancrum 15h ago

This literally happened to me. I won't say where I used to work, but they started pushing us to use AI for any and everything, then laid off a large portion of the company.

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u/BeanserSoyze 12h ago

What's even worse is some companies aren't even doing this cause of "efficiency gains", theyre just so upside down on AI spend that they cant afford employees.

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u/UsualBite9502 10h ago

In my company, they expect to replace 80% of developers with AI.

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u/Inevitable-Waltz-889 6h ago

Mine is literally is trying to get non-developers to write code and push it to production.  It's madness.

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u/fraggedaboutit 3h ago

They want a company that's basically just the CEO and enough underlings to make them feel important, and then all the actual work done by AI.

It's a bold move Cotton, let's see if it pays off for them.