Americans are souring on AI faster than the industry can spin it
From data centers in backyards to social media settlements, public anger at big tech is no longer a fringe sentiment, and it is turning up in election campaigns, boardrooms, and billion-dollar IPO filings.
Key points
- More than half of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, according to Pew Research Center.
- Around $130 billion worth of data center projects were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026 alone, per Data Center Watch.
- Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion to settle a bipartisan lawsuit over the harm its social media apps caused children and teens.
- Over 75% of young adults surveyed in a CNBC Generation Lab poll said they do not trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly.
- Both Anthropic and OpenAI are valued at close to $1 trillion and are preparing for public stock offerings where AI backlash is expected to appear as a formal risk factor.
The mood in America toward the technology industry has shifted from skeptical to openly hostile. Protests outside local government buildings, engineers testifying against their own employers, and a landmark court settlement, all in the space of a few months, paint a picture of a public that has stopped giving Silicon Valley the benefit of the doubt.
The anger runs on two tracks. One is about AI, the technology behind tools like ChatGPT and Claude that companies predict will reshape work and the economy. The other is about social media, and the damage platforms like Instagram and Facebook allegedly did to children. Both tracks converged this week.
What exactly has people so angry?
For AI, the flashpoint is physical: data centers, the warehouse-scale buildings packed with specialised computer chips that train and run AI systems. Residents in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have shown up by the hundreds to oppose new facilities, citing higher electricity bills, water consumption, noise, and the loss of farmland.
According to Data Center Watch, roughly $130 billion worth of data center projects were blocked or delayed in just the first three months of 2026. That figure nearly matched the $156 billion worth disrupted across all of 2025. A coalition called Stop Data Centers is now pushing for a full national pause on new builds.
In Seattle, Amazon engineers went a step further. They testified before the city council in June, calling for tighter government regulation and criticising their own company's use of what they called "dirty energy" at some sites.
Should ordinary people be worried about what comes next?
The short answer is that the tension is real and is spreading. Opposition to data centers has become a campaign issue in this year's midterm elections, just two months away. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, an arm of the Republican Party focused on Senate races, privately flagged data centers as a "sleeper issue" for the entire election cycle, according to a memo reported by CNBC.
On the social media side, Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, agreed this week to pay up to $17 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a bipartisan group of state attorneys general. The attorneys general argued that Meta knowingly harmed children. The settlement includes a default two-hour daily screen limit for teenagers, silenced notifications during school hours, and stronger parental controls.
Trust in the executives running major AI companies is particularly low among younger adults. A CNBC Generation Lab survey of 18- to 34-year-olds found that more than 75% do not trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly, while around 70% said the same about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
| Metric | Figure | Source / Date |
|---|---|---|
| Americans more concerned than excited about AI | 50%+ | Pew Research Center, 2026 |
| Same figure in 2021 | 37% | Pew Research Center, 2021 |
| Data center projects blocked, Q1 2026 | ~$130 billion | Data Center Watch |
| Data center projects disrupted, all of 2025 | ~$156 billion | Data Center Watch |
| Young adults who distrust Amodei | 75%+ | CNBC Generation Lab |
| Meta settlement value | Up to $17 billion | Bipartisan AG coalition, 2026 |
Amodei addressed the distrust directly in a post on X earlier this month. "I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust," he wrote, adding that people "always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over."
Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, a research organisation that studies the social impact of AI, told CNBC the industry cannot treat public anger as a marketing problem to be smoothed over. "Treating it as a PR problem," she said, "would be tremendously misguided."
For people wondering what to do: the Meta settlement's new teen protections roll out across Facebook and Instagram, so parents of teenagers should check the parental control settings in both apps. On data centers, local planning meetings are where opposition is having the most impact, attending one is a realistic way to have a say.
