🔥 What the AI Backlash is Getting Wrong

Corey Tate
Jan 13
2 min read

Why the AI panic sounds convincing and still gets it wrong.

There’s a growing idea that AI is going nowhere. You’ve probably seen a lot of these ideas: AI bubble, AI slop, a threat to humanity, a shortcut to mass unemployment and more.

These ideas don’t stand up to reality, but they’re popular in news media and social media because they push people’s emotional buttons.

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That story spreads fast since it taps into anxiety, identity, and fear of losing control. The problem is that it doesn’t match what’s actually happening on the ground, inside companies, inside tools, and inside real workflows.

Why People Hate AI

▪️They think AI will take their job

AI is more likely to keep people in jobs and create new jobs. This backlash forms when people only see AI framed as automation and elimination, instead of augmentation.

It gets reinforced by headlines that focus on replacement instead of leverage. That framing is wrong since most real-world AI adoption expands output, creates hybrid roles, and makes existing jobs harder to eliminate, not easier.

▪️Jobs cuts and job losses are incorrectly attributed to AI

Layoffs get blamed on AI since it’s visible and emotionally charged. Job cuts are continuing to happen mostly because companies overhired from 2021 - 2024. It was easy to scoop up people to prevent them from going to their competitors, and now they feel it’s time to eliminate some of those jobs.

▪️People hate and resist change

People are wired to distrust sudden shifts, especially when tools evolve faster than social norms or workplace training. That instinct misfires here since AI adoption follows the same curve as spreadsheets, email, search and mobile, all of which triggered panic before becoming invisible infrastructure.

▪️They think AI is replacing artists and creatives

This fear happens because the output of generative models is now visually indistinguishable from human craft, leading to a defensive protectionism over traditional methods. AI is actually a way for creatives to give a massive boost to their creativity, acting as a collaborative partner instead of a replacement.

▪️Most people haven’t tracked the major leaps that AI has made in the second half of 2025, and still think of it as a low-grade tool

Public perception froze around early chatbots and glitchy image generators (AI slop), even as systems crossed major thresholds in reasoning, multimodality, and workflow depth. Judging today’s AI by last year’s tools doesn’t align with reality.

▪️Google, Microsoft and others are forcing AI into all of their tools and people are complaining

People react negatively when AI shows up without context or education, especially when it changes interfaces you’re accustomed to overnight.