Tech backlash grows over AI, data centers and social media

Silicon Valley’s technology leaders have long dreamed of making the world a better place. But now more than ever, Americans say they’re living in a tech-induced nightmare.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence giants like OpenAI and Anthropic has exacerbated a deep malaise toward the tech sector, especially among people who have come to associate AI with job loss and now see outsized data centers rising up in their backyards. The last generation of technology, meanwhile, ushered in a cohort of social media apps that proved so addictive that Meta agreed to fork over up to $17 billion as part of a landmark settlement this week.

At a time of stubbornly high inflation that’s pushed consumer confidence to a seven-month low, Americans are looking up to see tech’s trillion-dollar companies getting bigger and more powerful, all while being led by some of the wealthiest people on the planet.

“If this technology takes off in the way that you see the CEOs of AI Labs talking about, we’re facing a significant impact to our economy, to people’s jobs, to their sense of agency,” Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of research firm AI Now Institute, told CNBC in an interview. “There are lots of members of the public that don’t want to see that vision roll out.”

More than half of Americans say they’re more concerned than excited about the growing use of AI in daily life, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. That’s up from 37% in 2021. And in a poll earlier this year, the Searchlight Institute found that the overwhelming majority of voters believe social media has a negative impact on society. 

Confidence in AI executives is even more dismal, according to a CNBC Generation Lab survey of 18- to 34-year-olds. More than 75% of respondents said they don’t trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly, while around 70% expressed views about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The public’s mounting disdain for the tech sector could prove especially challenging for Anthropic and OpenAI, both valued at nearly $1 trillion and gearing up for potentially historic IPOs. Those offerings could mint a number of fresh billionaires and scores of millionaires. AI backlash is expected to appear as a key risk factor in Anthropic’s IPO prospectus, as CNBC previously reported.

In a post on X earlier this month, Amodei acknowledged that the public has a negative view of AI, and he said Anthropic and other companies will have to deliver on their promises to improve people’s lives.

“I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust,” Amodei wrote. “I think 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. The causes of this go back decades, and AI is just the latest iteration of it.” 

Experts told CNBC that backlash against the tech sector is reaching new heights, and that the widespread angst is drowning out conversations about its potential benefits, particularly regarding AI. Companies have to go beyond a charm offensive, they say.  

“Treating it as a PR problem and a problem of public sentiment would be tremendously misguided,” West said. “To improve public sentiment requires really meaningfully contending with where the public is at and what they want in a more meaningful way than just, ‘Can we convince you to get on board?'”

AI data centers, the large facilities that house the hardware for training and running AI models, have become a particularly sore subject, serving as a physical manifestation of the widespread anger toward AI.

During the first quarter of this year, around $130 billion worth of data center projects were blocked or delayed due to local opposition, according to a report from Data Center Watch. In just three months, that figure neared the roughly $156 billion worth of facilities that were disrupted during all of 2025. 

As backlash against the facilities has mounted, groups like the Stop Data Centers Coalition have been pushing for a national moratorium on new projects to give lawmakers and the public time to more closely examine their environmental, societal and economic impacts.

Emily Wurth, organizing director for Food and Water Watch, said data center concerns cut across a number of issues, including water use, higher utility bills, emissions increases, noise pollution and the potential that the facilities are “taking over agricultural land.”

In parts of Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, she said she’s seen “hundreds of people showing up to speak out and oppose these projects.”

“I think it likely caught companies and legislators by surprise,” she said.

The outrage has spilled into the tech workforce. Amazon engineers testified at a Seattle City Council meeting in June, calling for greater government regulation of AI data centers and criticizing the company’s use of “dirty energy” at some sites.

“There’s not a lot of trust necessarily in the utilities and the regulators, given the higher electricity prices that we’ve seen over previous years,” James Coleman, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota, told CNBC in an interview.

Sentiment isn’t universally negative. Jennifer Huddleston, senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, said in an interview that “many unions are coming out in favor of data centers, not only because of the initial construction boom, but also the electricians and HVAC” professionals that are in demand “once they’re built.”

The so-called hyperscalers responsible for much of the building boom say they’re responding to insatiable demand from businesses and consumers for their services, many of which are enabling critical advancements in areas like medical research and precision farming.

Even so, opposition to data centers has become a major flashpoint in this year’s midterm elections, which are just two months away. Both Democratic and Republican hopefuls have spoken out against the facilities during their campaigns. 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, warned that data centers have become a “sleeper issue” for the entire midterm election cycle, according to a memo obtained by CNBC earlier this month.

The lawsuit that Meta settled this week was brought by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general, who argued that Meta endangered children and teens with its social media apps like Instagram and Facebook. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to make substantial changes to its products in addition to paying billions of dollars in penalties. 

Meta agreed to impose changes including a default two-hour daily time limit for teens across Facebook and Instagram, muted notifications during school hours, and enhanced parental controls, with more updates potentially on the horizon.

“It’s a floor conceptually, not a ceiling,” California AG Rob Bonta, who co-led the case, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Steyer described the settlement as an overdue but “well-deserved victory” that reflects broad public sentiment. He added that the antipathy towards tech is the most intense it’s been since he founded Common Sense more than 20 years ago. 

It’s a “qualitatively different moment in terms of the backlash,” Steyer said. “If I were running one of the big companies, I would be very aware of that.”

Then there’s the matter of surveillance, and Atlanta startup Flock Safety.

Flock’s technology, which photographs every passing license plate and uses AI to extract data, has been installed across thousands of American cities and towns. Critics say police have used the cameras to stalk women or wrongfully accuse people of crimes.

Ahead of the midterms, politicians on both sides of the aisle have called for greater regulation. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, posted a video on X earlier this month accusing his Republican counterpart, Mike Rogers, of enabling their proliferation. 

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose term ends in January, said this week the systems were “out of control.” President Donald Trump said his stance on the cameras is “under review.”

More than 90 cities have deactivated, rejected or canceled Flock contracts so far this year, according to DeFlock, an advocacy group that tracks the rollout of Flock systems.

A Flock spokesperson said the company has found new city partnerships have outpaced nonrenewals by about “10 to one.” Flock welcomes regulation of automated license plate reader technology, and it’s rolled out features to flag abnormal search activity in its systems, the spokesperson added.

“We know from our data and from customers that we hear from every day that there is wide support for ALPR technology to deter and solve crime with appropriate safeguards in place that protect privacy and provide objective evidence,” Flock’s spokesperson said in a statement.

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the fallout around Flock “folds neatly” into the resentment toward AI, data centers and the power of tech billionaires.

“I think there is a long-term grassroots bipartisan suspicion of this kind of surveillance,” he said.

—CNBC’s Annie Palmer and CJ Haddad contributed to this report

WATCH: Tusk Venture’s Bradley Tusk on what data centers need to do to gain trust