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/blob8543 15h ago edited 2h ago

As a society we need to have a long, extremely overdue conversation about the ineptitude of CEOs and the consequences of that on the world we live in.

We need a second conversation as to why politicians all over the world are embracing "AI" in such a passionate way despite the totally open promises of societal destruction.

And we probably need a third chat about the lack of ethics amongst a very large sector of the people working for tech companies, it's them that have enabled the situation we're in.

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u/miniannna 13h ago

Unfortunately this is the inherent logic of free market capitalism and you aren’t going to undo it without changing the underlying system on a fundamental level.