Tech leaders are all in on AI; the public, not so much

Tech leaders are beginning to worry about the public’s underwhelming enthusiasm for their plans to remake the world with artificial intelligence. Will that burst the bubble?

Silicon Valley executives promise that artificial intelligence is going to radically change everyone’s life for the better, starting just a few minutes from now. AI is described as the new electricity. It’s even bigger than fire. Don’t bother saving money for retirement because everyone will be rich rich rich.

Your grandparents heard pretty much the same thing. The creators of a new technology have always sold it as producing a fundamental transformation of human existence. The radio was touted as bringing “perpetual peace on earth.” Television was supposed to arouse so much empathy for different cultures that it would end war. Cable television would educate the masses and lead to widespread enlightenment.

This time, though, the masses have not been won over.

In a You.gov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that AI would end human life on Earth. Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put AI on their devices. And in the most recent large survey conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 80% of firms reported that AI was having no impact on their productivity or employment.

The chief salesperson of the AI boom, Sam Altman of OpenAI, said there was more resistance to “the diffusion, the absorption” of AI into the culture and economy than he expected.

“Looking at what’s possible, it does feel sort of surprisingly slow,” Altman said at an AI conference this month.

Jensen Huang, CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, is worried. The tech industry hype may seem omnipresent, but Huang feels “the battle of narratives” is being won by the critics.

“It’s extremely hurtful, frankly,” Huang said in a podcast interview last month. “A lot of damage” has been done by “very well-respected people who have painted a doomer narrative, end-of-the-world narrative, science fiction narrative.”

In Huang’s view, the critics want regulations that will hamper the AI industry and slow it down. Meanwhile, the sceptics are “scaring people from making the investments in AI” that would make it better.

Nvidia, which makes the chips that power AI data centres, does not lack investors. It is now the most highly valued company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $4.5 trillion. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have also seen their values soar. Some AI startups have become fantastically valuable practically overnight in a way never quite seen before, starting with OpenAI.

Huang is nevertheless correct. Adoption has plateaued. In the fourth quarter of 2025, 38% of employees told Gallup that their workplace had integrated AI technology. That number was essentially unchanged from the third quarter.

AI is clearly not technology that is being universally encouraged as inevitable. Corporations often report that, so far, it does not seem to do much. But fears are everywhere. The S&P North American software index fell 15% in January, its biggest monthly decline in 17 years, on fears that AI would replace software.

“I can’t really remember a boom with such active hostility to it,” said William Quinn, co-author of “Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles.” “People usually find new technology exciting. It happened with electricity, bicycles, motorcars. There were fears but also hopes. AI is notable, perhaps unique, for the lack of enthusiasm.”

The indifference and hostility to AI were probably inevitable. AI’s champions describe an unsettling future where humans who use the technology will replace those who don’t.

Perhaps this is why AI regulation is one of the few issues that a divided America seems united on: According to a Gallup survey last spring, 80% of Americans want rules for AI even if that means the technology develops more slowly. It’s not just low-skill workers who are wary. Each year Edelman, the global communications firm, surveys trust in society. In its latest report, released in January, two-thirds of low-income US respondents said that “people like me will be left behind rather than realise any real advantages from generative AI.” Perhaps more remarkably, nearly half the high-income workers felt the same way.

For all the familiarity of its promises to change the world, some things about the AI boom are different — and are holding it back from the warm embrace of the public.

Past booms like the 1849 California gold rush or the dot-com bubble offered at least the illusion of public participation. You, too, could go to California and try your luck.

Starting an AI company, on the other hand, requires expertise and serious funding. For most people, AI is instead something imposed on them, starting with their email and web browser.

Another problem is that the biggest boosters of AI have a tendency to come out with very dark comments, sometimes without seeming to realise it. Talk-show host Jimmy Fallon last winter somewhat plaintively asked Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, “Will we still need humans?”

Gates replied: “Not for most things.”

This month, Mrinank Sharma, the leader of the safeguards research team at Anthropic, cryptically posted on social media that he felt pressured “to set aside what matters most.” The world, he said, “is in peril” and while the problems were “not just from AI,” he was quitting to write poetry.

The “doomer narratives,” as Huang of Nvidia would call them, are coming from inside the AI house.

The tech executives who are betting their companies’ futures on the triumph of AI have many resources to make sure it happens. They can spend even more money to build even more data centres. On the other hand, data centres around the country are increasingly a target of opposition for local residents who dislike the noise, the disruption, the secrecy and the lack of community benefits like jobs.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, recognises the risks here. He believes that “the real question” is when AI will be perceived as helping people.

People admire AI as a newfangled tech tool that can perhaps do amazing things, he suggested at the Davos economics forum last month. But they don’t necessarily see a positive effect in their own lives.

“I think we, even as a global community, have to get to a point where we’re using this to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries,” Nadella said.

Without that, he warned, the technology will lose “social permission” to, for example, use as much energy as it does — a thirst pushing up the price of electricity for US households.

The AI companies seem increasingly alert to a perception problem. This year’s Super Bowl featured AI-themed ads that were defensive or just odd. Amazon’s ad showed AI proposing ways to kill Chris Hemsworth. The twist at the end: AI disarms him with a promised massage.

In Thrall to Devices

Anxiety over technology has been building for a long time. What is new with AI is that the fears are so vague yet so comprehensive that they are breaching the walls of Silicon Valley itself.

In a 2024 survey of registered voters in the Bay Area, three-quarters said the leading tech companies had too much power and influence.

Robert Thomas, a retired Bay Area psychologist, is one of the disaffected. “At first we greatly anticipated the electronic conveniences created by cybergeniuses — the personal computer, the internet, the iPad, the iPod, etc.,” he said. “However, since then things feel out of control. More and more, my life is partly controlled by some electronic device. Even worse, “I barely relate to people anymore.”

From the point of view of the AI promoters, an inability to relate to human beings is not a defect but a virtue. “I suspect that in a couple of years on almost any topic, the most interesting, maybe the most empathetic conversation that you could have will be with an AI,” Altman said on a podcast.

No wonder Thomas, who is 78, often feels frustrated. He fantasises about punching a young tech worker in face. And yet. He had ChatGPT write a speech for his wife’s birthday. It was beautiful and eloquent.

All of which means the future of AI could probably go either way.