AI Backlash: Another Tech Hype Hangover (and Is Crypto to Blame?)
(OpenAI Deep research demo prompt: Write an essay on why there might be backlash to AI, and if it's related to NFT/crypto visibility.)
It wasn’t so long ago that artificial intelligence was hailed as the new oracle of our strange modern world. Visionaries promised it would revolutionize art, medicine, commerce—everything short of feeding the five thousand. Yet here we are, in 2025, watching a wave of suspicion and outright hostility rise against our would-be digital saviors. Political leaders, workers, artists, even some of the very engineers who built these “thinking” machines: all are eyeing AI with distrust. Is the public simply fearful of progress? Or do the cynics see something real beneath the hype? And lurking in the background is a contagion from another fiasco: the crypto crash. Could AI’s image problem be laced with the bitter aftertaste of the NFT mania that scorched the global imagination not so long ago?
Why Everyone Is Suddenly Mad at AI
Ethics, Misinformation & Existential Dread
AI’s swift ascent has brought big moral tremors. We needn’t reach all the way to a Terminator-style apocalypse to see why the mood is sour. Even humdrum AI implementations can mislead, amplify prejudice, and spew nonsense that’s presented as unimpeachable truth. In early 2023, leading search engines—Google, Bing—bolted chatbots onto their main pages, promptly yielding a carnival of verbose but hollow pronouncements. Cory Doctorow called these “fully automated, supremely confident liars.”(1) Such illusions at scale become the perfect breeding ground for misinformation.
The trust gap yawns wide. According to one Gallup poll, 79% of Americans don’t believe companies will handle AI responsibly,(2) and only a tenth think AI’s benefits outshine its dangers. Even the lofty realms of academia have begun their assault: Noam Chomsky dismissed ChatGPT as “high-tech plagiarism” and “a way of avoiding learning.”(3) The existential gloom hovers too: insiders warn that AI could, if taken to extremes, spiral beyond human control. Some have called for a halt to advanced research, painting doomsday scenarios of digital overlords rising from chat logs. Others see cynical marketing ploys in these “AI x-risk” campaigns: fear-mongering to keep the hype afloat, reminiscent of a clown persuading you he needs a nuclear bunker because his next cheeseburger may be too delicious for civilization to handle.(4)
In short, the AI conversation is flipping between awe and alarm, with alarm taking a stronger hold these days.
“They Took Our Jobs!” – Automation Anxiety
Nothing stokes public outrage quite like the specter of unemployment. For years, industrial laborers feared the mechanical arm would replace them on the assembly line. Now that same dread afflicts white-collar and creative sectors. A solid three-quarters of Americans say AI will slash job opportunities in the next decade.(5) When CEOs openly hint at cutting staff in favor of “smart” systems, the suspicion grows that soon all of us—lawyers, journalists, truck drivers—might be rendered irrelevant.
In 2023, the dread was fed by real events. Microsoft axed news editors, replaced them with AI, and promptly found itself apologizing for the fiascos that followed. BuzzFeed bragged of tapping AI to pump out articles, and its stock soared while human writers looked on, unimpressed. Hollywood erupted: the Writers Guild of America walked off the job, in part to keep soulless scripts from being hammered out by chatbots. SAG-AFTRA joined them with demands for guardrails to protect actors’ voices, faces, and creative rights from unlimited replication. The result: a national storyline that links “AI” and “layoffs” in the same breath. Even if the tech can’t yet do the job as well as a human, the fear it might soon do so is enough to darken the mood. Pessimism is a powerful lens, and it’s fueling a near-instinctive recoil against these machine doppelgängers.
The Creative Revolt: Artists, Writers, and Musicians vs. The Machine
For an especially fierce battleground, look to the arts. Painters, novelists, musicians—anyone who crafts original work—have grown incensed at the generative AI explosion. Why? Because these algorithms feast on existing human creations. Countless images, texts, and sounds were trawled, stashed in data sets, and turned into the AI’s training fodder. No permission, no payment. To many creators, it is industrial-scale plagiarism: the machine soaking up their efforts and churning out derivative knockoffs.
Pushback has been swift. Thousands of artists, authors, and musicians signed a public statement condemning AI firms for scraping creative works without consent.(6) A choir of luminaries—Margaret Atwood, George R.R. Martin, Robert Smith, and more—cried “Hands off our art!” Meanwhile, major lawsuits sprang up. John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, and other authors are taking on OpenAI for training its chatbot on their novels. Visual artists are fighting Stability AI and Midjourney for using their illustrations without so much as a how-do-you-do.
The cultural mood is with these creatives. Art communities have banned AI images. Online platforms that once dabbled in welcoming machine-made art faced protest. Adobe tried to slip in revised terms that let them scoop up user content for AI training; a ferocious outcry forced a public backpedal. The heartbreak for creators is personal: it’s their sweat and blood feeding a technology that may soon supplant them. So AI has become, in the cultural eye, a threat to individual expression—a flashpoint of anger.
Even the glitzy world of film isn’t safe from scorn. One indie production admitted to “tweaking” actors’ dialogue with AI voice synthesis, and film buffs roared about digital puppetry. If mild tinkering set off social media storms, you can imagine the fury over deeper AI infiltration into Hollywood’s craft.
The NFT/Crypto Connection: Hype by Association
Even if AI had never insulted an artist nor threatened anyone’s job, it faces another peril: the stink of Web3. AI arrived on stage just as the NFT/crypto carnival was crashing. This whiplash of hype cycles—blockchain mania one day, GPT mania the next—has left the public suspicious of any new “revolution” Silicon Valley hawks. Fool me once, shame on me…
Hype Cycle Déjà Vu
Crypto mania burned a lot of people’s fingers. The NFT bubble (those pricey monkey cartoons and pixel punks) popped spectacularly, losing over 90% of its volume almost overnight.(7) Exchanges collapsed, stablecoins proved unstable, and the phrase “Web3” is now synonymous with fast-talking hustlers who vanished with the money. So, when AI marketing took off, many observers felt the chilling sense of déjà vu.
Cory Doctorow described how the same starry-eyed investment teams that once declared “blockchain is the future” now proclaim “AI is a \$6 trillion opportunity.”(8) The treadmill of hype churns on, with CEOs elbowing each other aside to rename everything “AI-powered.” If you listened to them, you’d think an epochal transformation is upon us—just like they said about the metaverse, crypto, and every other ephemeral “next big thing.”
This fiasco scars AI’s reputation. People are tired of being told that a new technology will solve all ills, only to watch it degrade into a novelty for speculators. In the darkest corners of the net, the same day-traders who minted coin after coin are now hawking “AI tokens,” some with no link to actual AI development at all.(9) It’s tulip mania in new clothing.
Brand Bleed: Web3’s Stain on AI’s Image
It doesn’t help that many of the same hustlers from the crypto bubble are now championing AI. Venture capitalists who minted fortunes from ephemeral blockchains are pivoting to large-language models. The public lumps them all together: big talkers promising tomorrow’s gold. This association, fair or not, tarnishes AI. Plenty of potential believers step back, thinking: “Oh, it’s just another valley-of-snakes fiasco.”
Media coverage amplifies this. After years of breathless NFT headlines, news outlets have grown more jaded. They now poke holes in AI’s lofty promises. Cartoons circulate online of a sullen “crypto bro” losing everything in 2022, then reappearing in 2023 with a new grin: “Hey, I’m an AI expert now.” It’s a comedic lampoon, yes, but the underlying message resonates: the hype machine doesn’t quit, and neither does the side-eye from the public.
Can AI Survive the Backlash (and Does It Need a Rebrand)?
So here stands AI, perched on the cusp of mass adoption, battered by real controversies and overshadowed by the wreckage of Web3. Regulators in the European Union draft new laws to shackle it. U.S. politicians summon chatbot CEOs to Capitol Hill for scolding sessions. Universities ban ChatGPT, calling it a “cheating engine,” while artists fashion logos of middle-finger salutes to keep AI off their creations. This is the shape of the backlash: thick, fast, and determined.
Is it mere knee-jerk Luddism bound to fade once AI’s utility becomes unavoidable? Or is the brand of “AI” now so bruised by its own stumbles—and by association with the crypto fiasco—that it’ll never regain the public’s trust without a major overhaul? Likely a bit of both. Healthy skepticism is a good sign: it means that society is paying attention and wants accountability. But it also means we’re seeing the messy consequences of a hype cycle that soared too high, too soon.
The AI industry might do well to distance itself from the cheerleaders of Web3. Grandiose talk of “revolution” or “superintelligence” does it no favors. Cory Doctorow has said “AI isn’t ‘artificial’ and it isn’t ‘intelligent’... it’s souped-up autocomplete.”(10) Perhaps rebranding would help: talk about “machine vision,” “assistive writing tools,” or “pattern analyzers,” and let real-world benefits speak for themselves.
If you boil it down, the backlash is a sign of technology’s adolescence. We’re grappling with how AI will reshape power, livelihoods, and creativity. None of this can be avoided; the conversation was always going to happen once the hype gave way to tangible impact. That said, AI must address the legitimate grievances—over data scraping, job losses, misinformation—and reassure the world it’s more than a bubble stoked by opportunists.
Unlike most failed crypto schemes, AI can genuinely deliver useful outcomes—if it’s guided responsibly. But for now, the suspicion remains. Perhaps a little purgatory is just what AI needs: let the illusions burn away, let the overblown claims vanish in the gloom, so that the real potential can come into view.
Until then, pour yourself a cup of quiet skepticism. Every carnival has its hangover, every mania has its morning of regret. This might be AI’s. Let’s see if it grows up before the next mania comes knocking—and let’s hope no cartoon apes show up along the way.
—“Keep calm and wait for the next update,” they tell us. Good luck with that.