--- title: "Ordinary People Fear AI, While the Tech Leaders Working to Create a Permanent Underclass Say They’re Extremely Psyched About It" description: "A new survey found a massive gulf in how optimistic regular adults are for AI compared to tech industry insiders." date: "2026-05-06" modified: "2026-05-06" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-perception-underclass" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" --- # Ordinary People Fear AI, While the Tech Leaders Working to Create a Permanent Underclass Say They’re Extremely Psyched About It ![A man in a green suit and blue shirt is laughing with a cigar in his mouth, sitting in an office setting. Beside him, there is a large, close-up image of another man with wide eyes and a tense expression, biting his nails nervously. The overall color tone is greenish, giving a dramatic and intense atmosphere.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* Despite a massive campaign by some of the wealthiest companies in the world to push AI as the cure-all for society's problems, regular working-class people remain resentful of the technology at best, and downright petrified at worst. At a contentious county commission meeting in Box Elder, Utah, for example, sheriff's deputies held irate community members back after three county commissioners [rammed through a hyperscale data center]() backed by Canadian billionaire Kevin O'Leary. A growing number of younger workers, fearing life in a market economy in which their labor is made obsolete, are [actively sabotaging AI]() in the workplace. A not insignificant number of concerned citizens have started ripping [AI surveillance cameras]() out of their mountings. Tech executives and AI experts, meanwhile, are stoked about the new technology. Corporate consultants no longer bite their tongues when they talk about devastating [workplace austerity regimes](), while tech executives like OpenAI's Sam Altman brag that AI is upending the [basic foundations of liberal democracy](). On the outside, it may seem obvious that the people building AI and the people simply living with it would see it from different angles. What's less obvious, however, is the sheer scale of the disconnect. As a [new report]() by Stanford University's AI center argues, this perception gulf between everyday people worried about the future and giddy industry insiders is massive. According to the study, nearly two-thirds of US adults expect AI to reduce the number of available jobs over the next two decades, while a huge number report concerns about AI's effects on society's cognitive abilities. Academic researchers, tech industry insiders, and analysts, meanwhile, "report more optimism than the US public," the report found. For example, a whopping 84 percent of "AI experts" surveyed expect positive impacts on medical care, compared to just 44 percent of regular US adults. For the economic impacts, 69 percent of experts expressed optimism, compared to just 21 percent of normal folks. (Intriguingly, there are a few things that the public and the AI insiders are collectively cynical about, like news media, personal relationships, and elections.) While the Stanford study doesn't try to explain the rift, there is a plausible explanation: the success of AI necessarily hinges on the creation of a permanent underclass, a massive social shift which tech insiders are all too aware of — indeed, some even [publicly boast]() about it. And make no mistake, the tech bros understand the math: a bunch of unemployed peons with nothing means a tiny handful of people will get everything. Whether we actually end up in this hellscape is hard to say. Currently, there's little evidence that AI is actually capable of disenfranchising the world's workers en masse — if there was, tech billionaires would certainly have thrown the switch by now. Still, be very suspicious of anyone telling you the [real battle lines]() are elsewhere. More than likely, they've got an AI startup they're trying to sell you on. **More on AI:** *[Chinese Court Rules That a Worker Cannot Be Replaced by AI]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()