The middle distribution of Gen Z’s feelings about AI range from apprehension to downright hatred. Despite the fact that more than half of Gen Z living in the U.S. uses AI regularly, according to a recently released Gallup poll, less than a fifth feel hopeful about the technology. About a third says the technology makes them angry. And nearly half say it makes them afraid.
Gallup’s own senior education researcher, Zach Hrynowski, blamed the bad vibes at least partially on the dwindling job market. The oldest Zoomers, he told Axios, are the angriest, as they are “acutely aware” of the ability of a technology to transform cultural norms without a second thought, unlike a Gen Xer who is trained to see new technology as toys and are still “playing around with AI.”
Indeed, job prospects for the recently graduated Gen Z are abysmal; Bloomberg just reported that 43% of young graduates are “underemployed,” meaning taking on jobs that require less education than they have.
[…]
This is not just a Gen Z problem, either. In the American heartland, data centers are being proposed at a pace that local communities never anticipated and for which they were never asked permission, and they’re increasingly pushing back.
The numbers are serious. According to a report from 10a Labs’ Data Center Watch, at least $18 billion worth of data center projects have been blocked and another $46 billion delayed over the past two years owing to local opposition. At least 142 activist groups across 24 states are now actively organizing to block data center construction and expansion. A Heatmap Pro review of public records found that 25 data center projects were canceled following local pushback in 2025 alone, four times as many as in 2024, with 21 of those cancellations occurring in the second half of the year as electricity costs grew.
The concerns driving this resistance are less about existential AI risk and more about typical kitchen-table complaints; communities consistently cite higher utility bills, water consumption, noise, impacts on property values, and green space destruction as their primary objections. Water use is mentioned as a top concern in more than 40% of contested projects, according to a Heatmap Pro review of public records.
You get “attempted murder” in America for setting a wall on fire and smashing glass?
In France, thats a Tuesday.
You can get charged with assault on a police officer if a cop slips and falls while trying to assault you.
Our prosecutors like to throw a bunch of heinous charges and see what sticks. Its how they get people to agree with plea bargains.
the Central Park Five and the West Memphis Three are two of the most infamous cases of lazy cops pinning brutal crimes on groups of children and then coercing confessions out of them.
That’s really fucked up. It almost guarantees that there’s gonna be a percentage of people who are totally innocent but take prison time in a deal because they are threatened by too much more. In my country the system is the opposite - too lenient, which isn’t necessarily bad if accompanied by work to rehabilitate and reduce recidivism, but there’s very little of that either.
i posted this comment on the wrong comment, meant to reply to you.
Your comment is geo-locked - I can’t read it because I’m in the UK and Finland has made the frankly sensible decision to block UK users because of our somewhat misnamed ‘online safety bill’! TIL. Interesting.
oh i was just mentioning the west Memphis Three and Central Park Five as very infamous cases of cops coercing false confessions of brutal crimes out of literal kids, then giving them life/death sentence depending on the individuals in the cases. one kid took an albert plea in order retain his innocence in writing but was still inprisoned and seen as guilty in the eyes of everyone. harrowing shit.
Yes.
Yup, we have an insane amount of laws and no one can actually read through and remember the entire legal code.
The average American unwittingly commits 3 felonies a day.
Lol, I commit at least two before I even leave the house.
In the US you get charged with a bunch of bullshit as an intimidation tactic (or often for propaganda reasons). In court it gets haggled down to the actual charges. No penalty for prosecutors doing this.
The assailant used chemical weapons in attempt to escape ICE.
Dude: I forgot to take my lactase and ate too much dairy for lunch and farted in his face while they were illegally arresting me.
But it’s not violent to threaten and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods with your humanity cleansing technology.
Shit makes no sense.