"The potential threat of bosses attempting to replace human workers with AI agents is just one of many compounding reasons people are critical of generative AI..." writes Wired, arguing that there's an AI backlash that "keeps growing strong."

"The pushback from the creative community ramped up during the 2023 Hollywood writer's strike, and continued to accelerate through the current wave of copyright lawsuits brought by publishers, creatives, and Hollywood studios." And "Right now, the general vibe aligns even more with the side of impacted workers."

"I think there is a new sort of ambient animosity towards the AI systems," says Brian Merchant, former WIRED contributor and author of Blood in the Machine, a book about the Luddites rebelling against worker-replacing technology. "AI companies have speedrun the Silicon Valley trajectory." Before ChatGPT's release, around 38 percent of US adults were more concerned than excited about increased AI usage in daily life, according to the Pew Research Center. The number shot up to 52 percent by late 2023, as the public reacted to the speedy spread of generative AI. The level of concern has hovered around that same threshold ever since...

[F]rustration over AI's steady creep has breached the container of social media and started manifesting more in the real world. Parents I talk to are concerned about AI use impacting their child's mental health. Couples are worried about chatbot addictions driving a wedge in their relationships. Rural communities are incensed that the newly built data centers required to power these AI tools are kept humming by generators that burn fossil fuels, polluting their air, water, and soil. As a whole, the benefits of AI seem esoteric and underwhelming while the harms feel transformative and immediate.

Unlike the dawn of the internet where democratized access to information empowered everyday people in unique, surprising ways, the generative AI era has been defined by half-baked software releases and threats of AI replacing human workers, especially for recent college graduates looking to find entry-level work. "Our innovation ecosystem in the 20th century was about making opportunities for human flourishing more accessible," says Shannon Vallor, a technology philosopher at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and author of The AI Mirror, a book about reclaiming human agency from algorithms. "Now, we have an era of innovation where the greatest opportunities the technology creates are for those already enjoying a disproportionate share of strengths and resources."

The impacts of generative AI on the workforce are another core issue that critics are organizing around. "Workers are more intuitive than a lot of the pundit class gives them credit for," says Merchant. "They know this has been a naked attempt to get rid of people."

The article suggests "the next major shift in public opinion" is likely "when broad swaths of workers feel further threatened," and organize in response...

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