In May, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told University of Arizona graduates that AI would remake the world like the computer once did. The boos started immediately.
Schmidt addressed the crowd's fear directly, acknowledging their anxiety about machines taking jobs and evaporating opportunities. That same month, record executive Scott Borchetta received the same treatment at Middle Tennessee State University after declaring that "AI is rewriting production as we sit here."
The assumption has been that AI backlash would come from the old and cautious. Instead, it's arriving loud and early from twenty-two-year-olds.
A Gallup survey of Generation Z confirms the mood. Excitement about AI fell 14 points in one year to 22%. Anxiety holds steady at 42%. Anger rose to 31%. Even heavy users grew less positive over time.
This isn't technophobia. About 51% of Gen Z use generative AI at least weekly. Among employed Gen Z, 48% say AI's workplace risks outweigh the benefits-up from 37% a year earlier. They trust work done without AI (69%) far more than AI-assisted work (28%). Almost no one trusts AI-only work.
The most fluent cohort alive has decided they don't fully trust what AI does to their own thinking. They fear a future they can picture clearly, and they're asking for a say in how it arrives.