From Indiana to Idaho, a Backlash Against A.I. Gathers Momentum [View all]

Source: NYT

When Michael Grayston, an evangelical pastor in Austin, Texas, heard that a friend’s relationship with an artificial intelligence companion had nearly destroyed a marriage, he saw a moral danger that needed to be addressed.

When Jack Gardner, a Boise, Idaho musician, discovered A.I. had made songs with copyrighted music, he and his wife, Cathryn, an elementary school band teacher, started a local group to call for A.I. legislation.

And when Bart and Amy Snyder, farmers in Wolcott, Ind., learned that a data center was going to be built 300 yards from their home, they worried it would drain local aquifers and started a campaign to unseat three county officials who had supported it.

Though none of them had been politically active before, they became part of a growing national movement that pits the tech industry and its billionaires against a diverse coalition of parent groups, religious leaders, environmentalists and former Tea Party activists. Politically they range from the populist firebrand Stephen K. Bannon to Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-backlash.html

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Much more at the link.

Democrats need this issue. It would be a very bad idea to cede opposition to AI to conservatives, as the Labour Party in the UK has done in some ways, trying too hard to pander to the AI companies, and making their worst mistake with an insane proposal that AI companies be allowed to train on any copyrighted intellectual property they want, with the artists being allowed to opt out later, if they could find out who'd stolen their work. This not only alienated many artists in the UK, including the most famous, but the AI companies then made it clear that artists being allowed to opt out would be too much of an inconvenience for them. They'd simply wanted their theft of IP legalized.

That's only one of the fights against AI that Democrats should be leading.

The AI companies have more money and Trump's support. But the opposition to AI is a true grassroots movement across the political spectrum. And it should be, because it's an existential fight.