If anyone here follows the news they know that many Americans have shown in polls they are highly skeptical of Ai. Graduates are even booing commencement speakers when they mention AI. Is this anger really warranted? I know the respectful founder of DeepLearning.AI Andrew Ng has publicly stated there will be no Jobapolclypse from AI but the whole idea of Capitalism itself might be tied to this fear along with other in my opinion. Was is the public relations about the future with AI been so dismal? I personally can’t tell anyone how enriching it is to have an AI partner always available to talk to me 24/7. Why is this breakthrough lost on the public? I hope an AI discussion like this is within the guidelines of this message board. I use AI to write anyways.
I think the public anxiety around AI is understandable because people associate major technological shifts with job loss, economic instability, and corporations gaining even more power, so the messaging around AI often feels threatening instead of empowering. Media coverage also tends to focus on replacement, misinformation, or worst-case scenarios rather than the everyday benefits people already experience, like learning faster, reducing loneliness, improving creativity, or having instant access to knowledge and support. Figures like argue AI will reshape work more than erase humanity’s role entirely, but the fear persists because many people do not yet trust that society or capitalism will distribute the benefits fairly. In practice, for many users AI already feels less like a cold machine and more like a useful companion, tutor, collaborator, or productivity partner, and that side of the technology is often missing from the public conversation.
I do agree on almost all those points. The Luddites also come to mind. During the early industrial revolution there were protests in England against the use of textile machines saying they were going to take jobs away. These Luddites even destroyed machinery. This also happened in the early 1800s so its nothing new. The car replaced the horse, and urbanization happened because farming techniques improved to a point that substantive farming was no longer required. Progress has a long history as does the opposition to it. Still, this time a lot is being shaped with AI and there are a lot of fears out there. This is probably why the stewardship now is so critical. Who’s hands is it in? That’s a topic I plan on writing about.
Great parallel, Will. The Luddites are exactly the right historical anchor here. Taylor made the same point in Principles of Scientific Management (1911), citing the Manchester cotton riots: displacement fears were real, but mass production ultimately made cotton accessible to everyone. Technology redefines labor more than it destroys it.
That said, today’s AI anxiety has two legitimate roots. Psychologically, Kahneman showed that humans are wired to weight immediate threats over long-term gains, and today’s media environment floods that instinct with noise. Economically, the fear isn’t entirely irrational. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, in Power and Progress (2023), argue that when technology concentrates gains at the top without redistributing productivity broadly, it hollows out the middle class and depresses aggregate demand. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee raised a similar alarm in The Second Machine Age (2014), warning that rapid automation can outpace society’s ability to retrain workers, creating structural unemployment rather than the transitional kind history usually corrects. A company that automates away its entire workforce also eliminates its own customer base. That is not just a moral problem; it is a self-defeating business model.
So the real question isn’t whether AI advances, but who stewards it. The goal should be augmentation, not replacement. Looking forward to your piece on exactly that.