Silicon Valley technology companies once promised to make the world a better place, but now Americans’ attitudes toward the technology industry have worsened significantly. Artificial intelligence, social networks, data center construction and mass surveillance systems are increasingly becoming sources of public dissatisfaction and turning into political issues, writes CNBC.
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Against the backdrop of persistently high inflation and declining consumer confidence, the contrast between the sentiment of ordinary Americans and the continued growth of the largest technology companies has become particularly stark. Costs for artificial intelligence developers OpenAI and Anthropic are quickly becoming higher, but the development of artificial intelligence is increasingly associated with the risk of job losses and the risk of building large data centers near densely populated areas. The last generation of technology gave rise to social networks, and their impact on users has been the subject of numerous complaints to authorities and public organizations. Yuan✴For example, it agreed to pay up to $17 billion to resolve related claims.
More than half of Americans say they are worried, rather than excited, about the growing role of artificial intelligence in their daily lives, according to Pew Research Center data. This number has increased significantly compared to 2021. An overwhelming majority of voters also believe social media has a negative impact on society.
This distrust also extends to the CEOs of big tech companies. More than 75% of Americans aged 18 to 34 surveyed do not trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to lead responsible technology development; about 70% feel the same about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO✴ Mark Zuckerberg. For OpenAI and Anthropic, this creates additional challenges as the two companies prepare to go public at multi-trillion dollar valuations. Anthropic directly cited negative public attitudes toward artificial intelligence as a risk factor, and Amodei acknowledged that a crisis of trust has developed around the technology. He argued that it would no longer be possible to view what was happening simply as a public relations issue: companies would have to deal directly with the root causes of dissatisfaction.
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A particularly sensitive topic is the establishment of a data center for equipment used to train and operate artificial intelligence models. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, some $130 billion worth of such projects were blocked or suspended due to local opposition, compared with $156 billion for all of 2025. Activists are pushing for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of new data centers so that lawmakers and the public can take a closer look at their environmental, social and economic impacts.
Opponents of building new data centers point out that they use high amounts of water and could increase utility bills and emissions, noise pollution and take up agricultural land. Even Amazon engineers spoke at a Seattle City Council meeting, calling for more regulation of AI data centers and criticizing the company for using power from the public grid in some facilities.
Hyperscalers are the main drivers of the construction boom, saying they are responding to rapidly growing business and consumer demands for computing resources. They also emphasized that artificial intelligence can contribute to the development of important areas of society, including medical research. However, there are still two months until the congressional midterm elections, and the issue of data center construction has become a political issue, with representatives from both major parties in the United States raising it.
Representatives from both parties also reached agreement on Meta✴ Because social networks, especially Facebook, can have a negative impact on children and teenagers✴ and Instagram✴. The company agreed to make changes to its service and pay billions of dollars to resolve claims related to it.
Another source of public outrage in recent weeks is cameras from Atlanta startup Flock Safety. The company’s cameras, installed in thousands of U.S. neighborhoods, capture the license plates of passing cars and then uses artificial intelligence to analyze the data. Police have been accused of using the system to inappropriately spy on women; there have also been cases where Flock data has been used as the basis for people being falsely accused of crimes. This year, more than 90 cities have suspended, terminated or refused to sign contracts with Flock.
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