I read this short article in Wired this morning about how the 2026 midterm elections were in part a way for people to register how much they hate AI: https://www.wired.com/story/the-results-are-in-voters-hate-data-centers/. Artificial intelligence itself wasn’t on the ballot, but a lot of candidates were running on pro- or anti-data center platforms, and AI requires big, noisy, resource-intensive data centers. Saying no to those candidates, and no to those data centers, is also a way of saying no to AI.
After reading, I went for the usual morning run with the dog, which is great for thinking. And what I was thinking was that maybe, if we all push against AI ubiquity, it won’t overrun absolutely everything. I can see a lot of use for AI in science and medicine, where vast amounts of data needs to be crunched (and then verified), but I don’t have much use for it myself. The things it could automate in the writing and editing processes are things I enjoy doing, so I just avoid it or turn it off or uninstall it at every turn.
There have been warnings that those of us who don’t use AI will be left behind, and I was like, “That’s fine. I’m happy to be left behind in my little writing and editing and translating world with a few fellow souls.” But now, in the wake of the repudiation of data centers and the AI that would live in them, I’m wondering if the people who had already started to rely on AI are the ones who will be left behind.
I have zero answers, only curiosity here. And maybe a little hope, even if it is overly optimistic.