Opinion | The AI Luddites Are Here

Ned Ludd was the fabled hero of the early-19th-century Luddites, who smashed stocking frames—knitting machines for socks—and burned factories to protest job-destroying technology. The Industrial Revolution created more jobs than it destroyed, and now a similar Luddite backlash against artificial intelligence is picking up speed like a runaway train headed toward Silicon Valley.

Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, New York’s Kathy Hochul, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs and Illinois’s JB Pritzker, all Democratic governors, have moved to halt or restrict data-center development or tax incentives. Et tu, Greg Abbott? Sadly yes, after being a huge supporter, Texas’ Republican governor recently signed a temporary moratorium.

Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act with 20-year prison sentences. Taylor Swift’s not so swift brother-in-law, podcaster and former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, urged sending sealable mugs of urine to data centers in a viral advertisement. How does he think his show is streamed? Cans and string?

A Gallup poll shows 71% of Americans oppose new data centers in their areas. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has an AI data center reporting website with 9,580 locations—suitable for finding protests. Left-wing organizations from Public Citizen to the Sierra Club help fund these protests, often citing concerns about water usage. I must have missed their protests against almonds and golf courses. Plus, unlike oil refineries or aluminum smelters, I doubt many would know if they walked past a data center.

More telling is a May YouGov poll that shows 71% of Americans “feel that the pace of AI development is moving too fast.” Yes, the same percentage as those that oppose data centers. So, it isn’t the environment, it’s jobs. Or maybe extinction.

Much of the blame lies with Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s marketing departments. We used to make fun of IBM, saying it would market sushi restaurants as selling “cold, dead, raw fish.” These AI companies are stocked with “rationalists” and “effective altruism” folks who devoured neo-Luddite Eliezer Yudkowsky’s 2025 book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.” An Anthropic employee quit this month, saying AI “could kill us all.”

The Luddite stench goes beyond data centers. New York City recently banned AI in public elementary and middle schools. Never mind that only 48% of New York’s students in grades 3 through 8 are proficient in English language arts, and 57% in math. Sure, let Ned Ludd teach ’em.

Los Angeles schools also restricted AI for all grade levels, despite proficiency scores as awful as New York’s. Why not infuse classrooms with self-paced AI tutors like Khanmigo or emulate the successful Alpha School in Austin, Texas? Two words: teachers unions.

Waymo robotaxis are in more than a dozen U.S. cities including the Bay Area, where you can ride from San Francisco to San Jose—but not to the airport. Unlike taxis, Uber and Lyft, Waymo can’t pick you up at the terminals, only at the Rental Car Center and the nearby Grand Hyatt. Why? Here’s a recent Associated Press headline: “Lyft and Uber drivers protest Waymo robotaxis.” Yesterday’s technology beneficiaries are today’s Luddites. A Vice headline from 2014: “Taxi Drivers Are Trying to Take Down Uber.”

London recently delayed the introduction of Waymo until at least next year. Of course it did. In the late 19th century, the U.K. imposed restrictions on mechanically propelled road vehicles under laws nicknamed the “red flag laws.” Speed limits were set at 2 miles an hour in towns and 4 in the country. One person had to wave a red flag while walking in front of the vehicle to warn horses and pedestrians. Maybe Waymos can have red robots run in front of them.

Bill Gates recently suggested taxing AI tokens. Almost a decade ago he proposed taxes on robots. It’s confusing to call Microsoft’s founder a Luddite, but there it is.

Vandalism of $2,500 food-delivery robots is on the rise. Some call it the anti-clanker movement. Ned Ludd would be proud. Of the first 80,000 food deliveries by Kiwibots at University of California, Berkeley, 1,600 were vandalized. A man in Washington filmed himself raging at a Mingo delivery robot, yelling “You took a human job!” after the robot asked for help pressing a crosswalk button. The man continued, “Press it yourself. Oh, that’s right, you don’t have fingers.”

If only Donald Trump had come out against data centers instead of for them, the mood would be different. While society can put up all the Luddite roadblocks it wants, technology always finds its way around opposition. Does that mean innovation will happen instead in China? Maybe. Elon Musk wants to launch data centers in space. Let’s see Erin Brockovich, or Julia Roberts for that matter, protesting in a spacesuit.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.