How Big Tech Blinded Itself to the Grassroots AI Revolt

The Silicon Valley playbook is failing AI.

And the messier things around artificial intelligence become, as they did again in the past two weeks, the more out of touch many tech leaders appear. That suggests that even if Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs live up to Wall Street’s lofty expectations, these companies will be long dealing with risky political and regulatory headaches atypical for nascent industries.

More bluntly, for many outside the tech world, these companies will be birthed as the bad guys, a remarkable swing from the early 2010s when founders were venerated as cultural heroes.

“After the Tylenol crisis, this is the next great comms case study but in this instance it’s what not to do,” Rachael Horwitz, a longtime tech PR pro, posted on X this past week as AI data-center agita stirred the nation’s politics.

In something of a mea culpa, OpenAI’s Sam Altman in a recent podcast acknowledged missteps. “We have not, as a field, done a very good job of explaining to people what the benefits are and how the downsides can be mitigated,” the CEO said.

But why has it gone so badly?

It is probably no coincidence that the rise of the current AI excitement coincided with a more inward-looking technorati spurning major institutions—whether that be government, regulators, media or any group perceived as slowing their innovation.

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter-turned-X in 2022 ushered in a “go-direct” movement among founders and venture capitalists who felt like they could talk directly to their stakeholders.

Travis Kalanick, the ousted founder of Uber, resurfaced publicly this year, crediting that very dynamic as he pushed his newest AI-focused startup. “Elon buying Twitter is the beginning of us being able to speak our minds and for disagreeing to not be illegal,” he said on a podcast this month.

The powerful sweep of social media has made reaching new audiences infinitely easier and cheaper for savvy founders. Wild ideas—maybe even outlandish ones—became in vogue.

But it also meant many in tech also have just been talking to each other in an echo chamber of their own creation. They were reaching Sand Hill Road, Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, not Main Street.

In turn, they were developing blind spots that are now glaring hazards as everyday folks fuel a bipartisan populist revolt against them.

“We have lost the muscle memory around actually what it takes to get out of Silicon Valley and get people—real human beings—engaged locally,” Horwitz told me about the tech industry a few days after her Tylenol post.

She cut her teeth first in politics then working for the likes of Google, which early on ran sophisticated public-relations operations to build support for its disruptive business model. Others, such as Uber and Tesla, would rely on similar tactics as they pushed new ways of doing things that threatened entrenched rivals.

For generations, tech startups, especially those involving consumers, have relied on a rather simple strategy of using the perception of momentum to help lift them.

Growth was the key metric. Build a user base as quickly as possible, which in turn signals to investors there is a market fit, justifying more funding. Rinse and repeat, ideally until the company is so well positioned it scares off potential rivals. Go public or get sold.

A swashbuckling swagger was all part of the culture as well. Steve Jobs’s pirate flag celebrated a certain rebellious esprit de corps. Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook on a “move fast and break things” motto that allowed for course corrections after missteps. Kalanick succeeded with Uber with what many saw as a win-at-all-costs strategy epitomized in his staff instructions: “Cheat codes. Find them. Use them.”

And AI had a similar vibe with predictions of curing cancer, disrupting entire industries, robot servants plus spicy warnings of what could go wrong from the creation of godlike superintelligence if these tech titans weren’t listened to. All of which helped fuel investor enthusiasm as consumers and businesses rushed to experiment with ChatGPT, Claude and others.

Yet, just as quickly, blowback followed: generative AI flooded social media with confusing slop and copyright threats; AI efficiencies were blamed—fairly or not—for job cuts. AI data centers and Flock cameras became political hot potatoes ahead of midterm elections; Pennsylvania recently became the latest state to limit AI data-center construction.

More than just politics, concerns around AI are becoming part of the fabric of pop culture. Former NFL player Jason Kelce, a co-owner of Garage Beer, featured in a now-viral online video encouraging viewers to bottle up their urine to send to data centers. “We want your pee to cool these data centers,” he said.

And, as if to punctuate things, social media was trending this past week with fan-filmed videos of what’s likely going to be a new banger from country music star Zach Bryan that captures the wistful feelings that many in towns across America are having. “The robot killed the working man,” he sang while belting out the yet-to-be released song to a crowd near Dallas.

Those lyrics could very well become the anthem of the fall.

In turn, the technorati are sputtering, trying to regroup for their counteroffensive while laying blame for why the dreams of AI aren’t being embraced. AI doomers’ predictions of “Terminator”-like movie outcomes are often on top of the list. Flyover-states’ lack of sophistication has been implied. Foreign influence campaigns is another theory.

Some are parsing polling data, arguing people aren’t against AI. They are just against wrongheaded perceptions about the effects on their electricity bills or local water consumption.

Unlike, say, Uber a decade ago. It showed it could turn to a powerful user base to lobby on its behalf when opposing political forces tried to hinder its business.

AI labs haven’t yet shown they have such muscles. It turns out tech guys ranting on X don’t have the same influence.