‘AI sucks!’: Why many young people are rejecting artificial intelligence

No doubt that Artificial Intelligence, long hailed as a revolutionary disruptor to life as we know it, will affect everyone whether they like it or not. However, an increasing number of the youngest cohort of workers, Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, is beginning to reject AI.

Case in point. In this university graduation season in the United States, not one but two speakers who talked about AI were booed, including Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google.

When Mr Schmidt said at the University of Arizona on May 15, “AI is going to touch everything. Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how work is done,” and that the technology was offering young people “a larger future than any generation in history,” he was met with resounding disapproval.

Similarly, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield was booed during her speech on May 8 at the University of Central Florida when she called AI “the next Industrial Revolution.”

A member of the audience even shouted, “AI sucks!”

How young people feel about AI

A recent Gallup poll showed a drop from 27 to 18% in the number of 14 to 29-year-olds who say they feel hopeful about AI from 2025 to 2026. Moreover, over 30% said that AI makes them angry.

Tellingly, almost half of the respondents (48%) said the risk the technology brings to the workforce outweighs its benefits, and four in five said that using AI as a shortcut is making learning harder for them.

More than 2 in 5 (42%) said that AI makes them anxious, 38% says it does more harm than good for creativity, and 42% says the same for critical thinking. 

Zach Hrynowski, a senior education researcher for Gallup, said that “Gen Z-ers have become increasingly sceptical, increasingly negative.”

What’s behind the negativity?

Most likely, the biggest reason for the negative attitude Gen Z has toward AI is a concern over the future of their jobs.

The former Google CEO acknowledged this in his speech, saying, as boos resounded around him, “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating.”

The fear is not without basis, given that in the United States, there were nearly 120,000 jobs lost to reasons linked to AI last year. Just this week, Standard Chartered announced almost 8,000 such job cuts to replace “lower-value human capital” with AI, and Meta is intending to retrench around 1/10 of its workforce this year, with 8,000 jobs cut beginning in Singapore on Wednesday morning. Amazon, meanwhile, has cut 30,000 corporate jobs.

Young people entering the workforce are facing an incredibly tough job market made more uncertain by the war in the Middle East, and have seen the entry-level jobs traditionally available to them dry up. /TISG

Read also: Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Minister warns against depending on AI to solve every problem