Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins/Futurism. Source: Getty Images
As for future technology, generic AI is definitely making a lot of enemies in a very short period of time.
If 2023 was the year of AI’s awakening and 2024 was the year of its frantic adoption, then it’s safe to say that 2025 will be remembered as the year it all came back to reality. From boardroom To classesFrom game studio To senate committeesThis will be the year that many will remember as the year when AI finally wore out its welcome.
In many small towns across America, the AI boom has resulted in a cloud of harmful smog that critics say is increasing cancer risks and leading to a hostile takeover of local infrastructure, not to mention rising electricity bills. That being the case, it is no surprise that large numbers of rural communities have spent years organizing and agitating to shut down the tech industry’s data center projects wherever they occur.
Indeed, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest, it seems the one thing people can agree on is that the data centers powering the AI gold rush make terrible neighbors.
Beyond data centers, AI is helping corporations increase the rate at which they exploit workers – both on the job and at home. For example, in the spring, Visa announced plans to give AI agents free access to customers’ financial information, one of several companies experimenting with an AI customer service pivot.
Of course, most Americans would prefer to bang their head against the wall and then talk to an AI customer service agent — not that there’s much difference, they’ll argue — as consumer sentiment surveys show. The hatred is so obvious that Americans have started accusing human customer service agents of being AI when they don’t get their way.
To be sure, it’s not just corporate big wigs getting fat from the AI boom. With newly discovered tools to project hyper-realistic content on an industrial scale, Facebook scammers, art forgers and racist influencers are also getting in on the fun.
This kind of Wild West approach has fueled the rise in protest movements like Pause AI, a group calling for a halt to AI development until we figure out what’s really going on. 2025 also gave us the first anti-AI hunger strike, spontaneous protests by activists in San Francisco, etc. LondonOthers have risen up against AI-powered surveillance networks operated by companies like Flock Safety,
Amid the outrage, a handful of politicians in the US have taken notice. For example, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders recently launched a campaign to put a stop to the “unregulated sprint to develop and deploy AI.” Representatives of New York have also joined his campaign Alexandria Ocasio-CortezWho recently criticized Republican legislators for their efforts to pass a 10-year ban on state regulation of AI.
Although the two progressive lawmakers may not get much support democratic comradesThey are joined by divisive right-wing figures like Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who have challenged their own Republican Party over opposition to the AI initiative.
“I’m not buying the story that they’re trying to sell us on this,” DeSantis said at a recent roundtable on AI. according to Washington Times,
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