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.
[...]
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.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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Of course they do. How the fuck do you not use AI regularly? It's not like they give you any choice, even if you hate it. There isn't some magic "No-AI" phone number or site that I can use to call or chat with my bank's support people.
Saying you don't use AI is like saying you don't use the power grid. Sure it's technically possible to strictly avoid it without exception if you really hate it that much, but like with the power grid you pretty much have to abandon all modern life and go live in a remote cabin in the middle of the woods and realistically almost nobody hates it so much they're going to do that. (Ironically the latter is actually getting easier with solar power and renewables, while avoiding AI gets harder, I'm sure AI solar panels are coming soon at the rate things are going...)
Its super fucking easy to not use AI regularly.
I have never used AI. I am not a Luddite. It really isn't hard to not use it. So far anyway.
As I understand it, the argument here is that it's more insidious and it's easy to accidentally use it. Google/Bing/DDG automatically using AI in searches, support lines forcing you through AI, Amazon using AI for review questions instead, etc
My conspiracy theory is that they intentionally made the internet search engines awful to force us to use AI.
we have meetings at my job about how we can work around the ai's limitations in order to justify the corporate push for it. solution in search of a problem
even my screenshot tool (Samsung) on my phone is called "ai-something or other". when they made the switch, it became laggy, unresponsive, generally slow to use, and far shittier than it was before.
great branding for AI, though, or something
GrapheneOS is looking like a really good prospect nowadays
GrapheneOS is the best. I'll stop using it when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
I’d disagree with that definition. It’s a little like saying that a pedestrian who got hit and dragged by a car was “driving”. At best, it’s someone else forcing their usage upon you. In the cases you mentioned, it is someone else (usually a company looking to save on customer service) who is using AI. The users are the pedestrians in this case, and the companies using AI are the car.
I think that would apply to people tricked into reading/watching AI slop video, but I think his definition is a likely one that could apply.
You try to google search, you get an 'ai overview'. In a bizarre scenario, DuckDuckGo made a big deal of asking the users and showing the users overwhelmingly wanted to skip AI results by default, and duckduckgo still defaults to AI summary unless you take measures to opt out.
An analogy is dificult, but I suppose imagine a subway dropped off someone and there's no stairs up, only a tunnel for a Tesla to take you to the next stop. You "use" a car, but were given no option to do otherwise because you were stuck underground and they forced you to take the car to carry on.
In either case, his definition certainly is a likely one for a Gen Z respondant to be thinking when they respond "yes they use AI". On the flip side some probably felt as you do and responded that they did not use AI, because they did not voluntarily do so.