Big Tech Fooled America Once. The Second Time’s Not Going So Well.; The New York Times, September 10, 2026

 Oren Cass, The New York Times; Big Tech Fooled America Once. The Second Time’s Not Going So Well.

"The popular uprising against data centers has emerged so suddenly that politicians stumble over their own pitchforks racing to the front of the crowd. Where most industries would be launching into crisis P.R. mode, perhaps even engaging in some soul-searching, artificial intelligence companies seem determined to plow full steam ahead, building the future they want, even if they’re the only ones who want it.

The outrage over data centers can’t really be about environmental impact. These structures have always been water-sucking, power-draining, forest-clearing eyesores, yet the recent plunge in support for them is three times as deep as the one that nuclear power plants faced in the year after Three Mile Island. What has changed is people’s awareness of what’s going on inside: artificial intelligence. Less than a quarter of Americans expect A.I. to have a positive impact on K-12 education, arts and entertainment, how people do their jobs, the economy, personal relationships or happiness over the next 20 years.

Once known for our optimism and ambition in pursuit of new frontiers, Americans no longer trust that technological progress will make life better. Who can blame us? For the past two decades, Silicon Valley’s leaders have treated their fellow citizens like caged guinea pigs, bombarding us with inappropriate and culturally corrosive content, turning a blind eye to social dysfunction and outright addiction, flooding schools with technology that hooked young users but did little for education and then sheltering their own children from the products that they marketed to ours. The American people afforded the technologists wide latitude to pursue disruptive innovation, trusting that we would share in the resulting gains. We instead found ourselves exploited.

In some respects it is the A.I. industry’s misfortune to arrive now, when Silicon Valley is no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but its leaders seem to be going out of their way to destroy any residual trust they might otherwise have built upon. Rather than take seriously the need to offer a positive vision for how the technology will benefit ordinary Americans — and then the need to make that vision a reality — the A.I. companies seem content to unleash wave after wave of products that cause obvious harm while delivering the message that this is all inevitable and you can get on board or get left behind."

AI's a suck up. Research shows how it flatters and suggests we're not to blame; NPR, April 23, 2026

 Ari Daniel, NPR; AI's a suck up. Research shows how it flatters and suggests we're not to blame

"In a recent study published in the journal Science, Cheng and her colleagues report that AI models offer affirmations more often than people do, even for morally dubious or troubling scenarios. And they found that this sycophancy was something that people trusted and preferred in an AI — even as it made them less inclined to apologize or take responsibility for their behavior.

The findings, experts say, highlight how this common AI feature may keep people returning to the technology, despite the harm it causes them.

It's not unlike social media in that both "drive engagement by creating addictive, personalized feedback loops that learn exactly what makes you tick," says Ishtiaque Ahmed, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto who wasn't involved in the research."