THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION
NOBODY TALKING: Tech executives obsess over AI adoption. Nobody is discussing why 64% of Americans now view AI as harmful—or that regular people simply don't want automation.
Why it matters
This is a cultural reckoning piece that explains the massive gap between tech industry enthusiasm for AI and public backlash. The core insight: the industry is trapped in 'software brain'—seeing the world as databases to optimize—while regular people experience AI as a flattening, surveilling force that asks them to become legible to machines rather than machines adapting to humans. Understanding this divide is critical for leaders navigating AI's social license and regulatory future.
The key facts
11 to knowNBC News poll: AI has worse favorability rating than ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Quinnipiac: 56% of Americans think AI will do more harm than good
80%+ of Americans very or somewhat concerned about AI
Only 35% of people excited about AI
Gen Z hopeful about AI dropped from 27% to 18% year-over-year
Gen Z anger about AI rose from 22% to 31% year-over-year
ChatGPT has 900M weekly users, trending toward 1B
OpenAI spent $200M on TBPN podcast for AI marketing
Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) warned AI could wipe out entry-level white-collar jobs and create employment crisis
Smart home automation adoption remains persistently low despite decade of tech investment
Political opposition to data center buildouts increasing; politicians receiving death threats over AI infrastructure support
Go to the source
The Verge AItheverge.com
Publisher excerpt: Today on Decoder, I want to lay out an idea that’s been banging around my head for weeks now as we’ve been reporting on AI and having conversations here on this show. I’ve been calling it software brain, and it’s a particular way of seeing the world that fits everything into algorithms, databases…