Silicon Valley’s promise to improve the world is colliding with a public that feels increasingly burdened by technology’s downsides, from AI-driven job worries to data centers sprouting up in residential areas. The backlash, once simmering, has reached a boiling point, according to experts and new data cited by CNBC.
More than half of Americans now say they are more concerned than excited about AI’s growing role in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, per a Pew Research Center report. And a Searchlight Institute poll this year found that an overwhelming majority of voters believe social media harms society, CNBC reported.
The angst is particularly acute among younger Americans. A CNBC Generation Lab survey of 18- to 34-year-olds found that over 75% distrust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly, while roughly 70% hold similar views of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
AI’s trust crisis
The distrust is a growing challenge for Anthropic and OpenAI, both valued near $1 trillion and preparing for potentially historic IPOs that could create new billionaires and millionaires. CNBC previously reported that AI backlash is expected to be flagged as a key risk factor in Anthropic’s IPO prospectus.
Amodei acknowledged the problem in a post on X earlier this month. “I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust,” he wrote, adding that “ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.”
Experts say the industry needs more than a PR push. “Treating it as a PR problem and a problem of public sentiment would be tremendously misguided,” Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, told CNBC. “To improve public sentiment requires really meaningfully contending with where the public is at.”
Data centers become a flashpoint
AI data centers have emerged as a physical symbol of the backlash. In the first quarter of this year, roughly $130 billion in projects were blocked or delayed due to local opposition, according to Data Center Watch—nearly matching the $156 billion disrupted in all of 2025.
Groups like the Stop Data Centers Coalition are pushing for a national moratorium on new facilities. Emily Wurth, organizing director for Food and Water Watch, cited concerns over water use, utility bills, emissions, noise, and the loss of farmland. “I think it likely caught companies and legislators by surprise,” she said, noting that hundreds of people have shown up to oppose projects in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
The anger has even spread to tech employees; Amazon engineers testified at a Seattle City Council meeting in June, criticizing the company’s use of “dirty energy” at some data centers.
Not all sentiment is hostile. Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, noted that “many unions are coming out in favor of data centers” due to construction and ongoing maintenance jobs. But the issue has become a major election flashpoint as midterms approach, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee calling data centers a “sleeper issue” in a memo obtained by CNBC.
Meta’s landmark settlement
In a separate front, Meta agreed this week to pay up to $17 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general, who argued the company endangered teens through Instagram and Facebook. The settlement includes a default two-hour daily time limit for teens, muted notifications during school hours, and enhanced parental controls.
California AG Rob Bonta called the changes “a floor conceptually, not a ceiling.” Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer described the settlement as a “well-deserved victory” that reflects intense public sentiment—the strongest “techlash” he’s seen in over two decades. “If I were running one of the big companies, I would be very aware of that,” he told CNBC.
Surveillance cameras draw scrutiny
Beyond social media, Atlanta startup Flock Safety’s license-plate cameras—installed in thousands of cities—have sparked bipartisan backlash. Critics allege police have misused the surveillance systems. More than 90 cities have deactivated, rejected, or canceled Flock contracts this year, per DeFlock, an advocacy group. Politicians including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have voiced opposition, and President Donald Trump said his stance is “under review.”
The cumulative effect, experts say, is a tech sector facing a credibility gap that won’t be easily bridged. As West put it, “There are lots of members of the public that don’t want to see that vision roll out.”
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/29/tech-backlash-ai-data-centers-elections.html
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