The middle distribution of Gen Z’s feelings about AI range from apprehension to downright hatred. Despite the fact that more than half of Gen Z living in the U.S. uses AI regularly, according to a recently released Gallup poll, less than a fifth feel hopeful about the technology. About a third says the technology makes them angry. And nearly half say it makes them afraid.
Gallup’s own senior education researcher, Zach Hrynowski, blamed the bad vibes at least partially on the dwindling job market. The oldest Zoomers, he told Axios, are the angriest, as they are “acutely aware” of the ability of a technology to transform cultural norms without a second thought, unlike a Gen Xer who is trained to see new technology as toys and are still “playing around with AI.”
Indeed, job prospects for the recently graduated Gen Z are abysmal; Bloomberg just reported that 43% of young graduates are “underemployed,” meaning taking on jobs that require less education than they have.
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This is not just a Gen Z problem, either. In the American heartland, data centers are being proposed at a pace that local communities never anticipated and for which they were never asked permission, and they’re increasingly pushing back.
The numbers are serious. According to a report from 10a Labs’ Data Center Watch, at least $18 billion worth of data center projects have been blocked and another $46 billion delayed over the past two years owing to local opposition. At least 142 activist groups across 24 states are now actively organizing to block data center construction and expansion. A Heatmap Pro review of public records found that 25 data center projects were canceled following local pushback in 2025 alone, four times as many as in 2024, with 21 of those cancellations occurring in the second half of the year as electricity costs grew.
The concerns driving this resistance are less about existential AI risk and more about typical kitchen-table complaints; communities consistently cite higher utility bills, water consumption, noise, impacts on property values, and green space destruction as their primary objections. Water use is mentioned as a top concern in more than 40% of contested projects, according to a Heatmap Pro review of public records.
I really dislike the term “the west”. Everyone is west of someone else. Russia is west of China, US is west of Europe. We live on a sphere if no one else has noticed.
Anyway…
One could argue the modern revolution is to not use something like AI, i just worry that there isnt enough people doing this to make it matter. This current AI stock market bubble is based on farts and rainbows, its going to be glorious to see it pop, but the world is going to suffer.
People use the term “the West” interchangeably with “US and historical allies after WW2 in Europe and North America that I will pretend are a single coherent block with the same history, social issues, internal affair and foreign policies (the US one) and that I will hate because of war/colonialism/slavery/lgbtq+”
The fact that France, Italy, Denmark, Poland, USA, and Brazil are radically different Western countries is unimportant to most that uses the world “West” in normal conversation.
I do not really care about west being used while geographically makes no sense. We are full of label that makes no sense. I would like at least to have a consistent definition.