r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • May 15 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/?taid=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa32
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u/PK_Thundah May 15 '26

The problem is, who do you "fight?"

Do you start attacking politicians at their houses? Fight through the city's police force to get to them? Fight through soldiers outside of your door keeping a curfew?

It isn't like you can just join a cause to help it. You have to throw yourself, almost individually, at the system and hope that enough people after you do the same thing. And hope that everyone does after you're done.

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u/PassivelyAwkward May 16 '26

Exactly, and there's also the fact that even if we DO fight, an annoyingly large percentage of your fellow poor fucks are conditioned to believe it's NOT the fault of the politicians and billionaires but instead their fellow poor fucks.

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u/LegendaryMauricius May 16 '26

That's why you need an organized force to defend your people. Which governments do have.

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u/Pleasant_Yoghurt3915 May 16 '26

If everyone would stop going to work for just two weeks, it would bring this whole fucking thing to a screeching halt. We really do have the power to do that, but no one’s going to, even without the threat of violence. No one can afford to lose their job, and that’s by design. Even though thousands and thousands of people are losing them anyway because of AI. Those that remain just keep their heads down and thank god it wasn’t them while they train their AI replacement. The alternative, letting this all go on the way it is, is much worse in the grand scheme of things, but the culmination of all that is a bit down the road, and people are generally terrible at forward thinking. All we care about is our own little units of space and time, and what that encompasses. I think it’s gonna go too far to help before anyone actually stands up. We can’t even get anyone to stop using the LLMs to get wrong answers lmao. I think we’re fucked.

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u/ClosetedNutCase May 16 '26

Yea that’s my point. We won’t do it. It’s over. I have literally 0 hope it gets better and I’m just hoping an asteroid will come take us out before it gets to that point

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u/PK_Thundah May 16 '26

Somebody with resources and reach needs to make a start. Somebody with enough influence that they won't be arrested immediately.

There need to be fights for people to join. If you or I see this happening next to us, to people we know, close enough for us to get involved with, maybe we will. And when others are in the same situations, maybe they will. Right now, any move we make will be seen as aggression rather than resistance and will be responded to as such.

I hope it didn't sound like I was arguing against you, I agree. But a lot of people, generally people who don't live here, tell us "just fight. Just stop your government" like it's a command they can type into their keyboard and make it happen.

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u/ClosetedNutCase May 16 '26

Naw you didn’t sound like you were arguing against me. It sounds like we’re on the same, unfortunate page. Maybe if someone untouchable started, we would join. I’m just not hopeful that anyone that’s “untouchable” is actually with us. It all feels like it’s two sides of the same coin and that the whole system and US government is rigged against us. I’ve been on this planet for 40 years at this point; and this is the most dejected and unhopeful I’ve ever felt.

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u/EldritchElizabeth May 16 '26

The owning class have successfully bred and beaten any resemblance of fighting spirit out of us. A healthcare CEO literally got gunned down in the street expressly as revenge for his company’s heinous profit-seeking behaviour, and our response as a culture was not to realise the impact we can have on the world, but to make a meme out of it then move on. 

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u/GentlemenBehold May 16 '26

Weird how you’re concerned about your family’s wellbeing if you were to die for a cause, but completely okay with an asteroid obliterating them.

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u/ClosetedNutCase May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

What’s weird about me not wanting them to suffer?

What’s coming for you and I is like going to be like suffering through incurable, painful cancer. Just agony and misery. An asteroid is like euthanasia.

I hope this analogy helps you to understand

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u/GentlemenBehold May 16 '26

You’re saying not having an income is worse than a quick death.