Enterprise AIExponential View

👀 The AI backlash is the only thing growing faster than AI revenues

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“If you create this big thing that is supposedly going to save a human's life, then you should give it to me in a human way”

Key takeaways

  • Anthropic achieving extraordinary growth ($10.9bn Q2 revenue, profitable 2 years early) while public backlash intensifies
  • Cultural resistance emerging at grassroots level - college students booing AI proponents at commencements, demanding 'human' solutions
  • Infrastructure impacts creating local opposition - data centers affecting water quality, environmental concerns becoming political flashpoints

Why this matters for operators: Limited - macro AI sentiment, not GTM/productivity specific

I cover AI×GTM intelligence like this every Wednesday.

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AI backlash becomes a real business risk

As we go all in on AI, the meta of whether its good, how its positives wlil be distributed, and just how far society is from optimizing for it is so real

  • AI sentiment has collapsed across all demographics: only 18% of Gen Z feels hopeful, 70%+ of Americans think it's moving too fast, and negative views doubled from 34% to 50% in three years
  • AI executives are dangerously disconnected from public sentiment - Superhuman CEO was literally unaware of negative polling, seeing AI adoption as 'inevitable as the internet'
  • Backlash is creating real business consequences: record data center cancellations in Q1 2026 due to community resistance, threatening the compute infrastructure AI companies depend on
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This analysis was produced using the STEEPWORKS system — the same agents, skills, and knowledge architecture available in the GrowthOS package.