Why People Say They Hate AI—and What They’re Really Worried About

When people say they hate AI, they may not be rejecting the technology itself. More often, they are reacting to the relentless efforts of the companies behind AI to force it into as many parts of daily life as possible. Those companies are warning people to prepare for the biggest social and economic upheaval in generations. How are people supposed to feel about that?

AI’s Backlash Has Happened Before

In many ways, we have been here before. Over the past two decades, a similar dynamic unfolded with social media. Billions of people joined Facebook and Twitter even as opposition to the companies running those services intensified. The same pattern can be seen with Google Search.

With social media, users had limited options. Leaving a platform could mean losing years of content and connections, leaving people with a choice between accepting the system or starting over.

AI Regulation Could Give People More Choice

AI could affect people in ways that social media did not, but there is also more political appetite for regulation this time around. All 50 U.S. states have passed or proposed laws governing the development and deployment of AI, creating a patchwork of more than 2,100 legislative measures—a tenfold increase in three years.

There is also the possibility of greater consumer choice. Several top-tier open-source alternatives to Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are already on the market, at least for now. Those alternatives could create additional market pressure and give users more options.

AI’s Future Is Not Inevitable

It would be naive to underestimate the power of multitrillion-dollar companies. They are difficult to dislodge. But what happens next is not as inevitable as these companies often suggest.

When I asked the CEO of Springboards why his company was developing a new model even though he does not particularly like AI, he said that you cannot back away from large language models, or LLMs—but you can make an LLM do something different.

That distinction matters. AI can be designed with clearer limits around what it can and cannot do. Most importantly, it does not have to behave as though it is trying to conquer the world.