A lot of my friends in San Francisco or my sources in the AI industry, they're very confused by the data center backlash because they'll be like, you know, data centers predated AI, so I don't understand why we're mad at them now. Um they take 2 years to build, sostopping all the data centers now does not stop AI. And third, the data centers are just going to go to other countries
a complaint, and have it investigated. backlash you will see.
economy left standing because corporate America was basically able to pass on through higher pricing the cost of much of America's welfare state. And for a backlash against our system that leaves people so insecure amidst all this change is serious. And the only way we'll get beyond that is if corporate
way exactly to fix this, but, you know, when I was talking to profess to teachers, certainly some were saying that they are starting to see, you know, a backlash against excerpts and sort of more efforts to return to, you know, reading full books and kind of doing more more knowledge building so that students would have an easier time, um, with, you know, reading comprehension.
technology, but rather specifically as an elite political project to be resisted. Um and the reason that I came to the term was I was thinking about the AI backlash and uh a lot of the reasons that people were uh increasingly anti-AI, whether that's LLM slop, whether that's Waymo's in their city, whether that's a new data center project. And one thing that occurred to me was that a lot of times the debate
and marketers of shoes made by other companies. The backlash against Nike amplified just as the company was expanding its retail operations by opening its upscale Niketown retail outlets around the country. Picketers and news cameras showed up at store openings, including one in San Francisco, where NFL wide receiver Jerry
But this isn't just a San Francisco issue. This backlash to growth is something that happens in a number of places. And Palo Alto voters in 2013 passed something called Measure D where they rejected a specific project, an affordable senior housing
we're seeing uh an increasing number of what you might think of as the undeserving ultra rich is going to spawn a backlash against capitalism that wrongly discredits the system altogether if we don't get out front of it and find ways to um to to rein in these excesses.
And people fight over which of those is the real America. Um and that's what the Civil War was about. And that's sort of what the backlash to reconstruction was about. It's about the Civil Rights Movement. It's the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. We just sort of cycle um through American history. And if we can see that pattern, I think maybe we
They've banned my account for a Primark top. There's a backlash on social media. Users believe automated decisions are to blame.
And I thought we're starting to see a backlash now. And the backlash , I think, is coming not from men being in terrible places. I don't think there are many men who want to maintain misogynist, patriarchal inequality, at least not if you ask them directly.
And I think also maybe, historically, artists have not always been able to be as vocal about the things they believe in, or there might be backlash . Or we know. We know that there are systems that keep Black people from being able to express their oppression or their feelings about certain things
And in an instant, that was diffused. And will I get backlash ?
Right, because the media would have never thought that it was even possible to come up with this crazy idea of banking without a bank to begin with. But what is the backlash if you were to not be transparent about tax? It could be huge.
So if your goal isn't to build relationships with every single person, don't stay in the heart realm. If 5% of people backlash and then give us negative feedback, we'll turn it off.
addresses a segment of that audience and that is people working in the US tech industry. It's called the backlash against technology.
And could you build a way into your platform or product to give them the right to capture, share, or monetize their data independently outside from you? And companies can expect backlash , actually, from the users of their products and from employees actually when those terms of service
And it wasn't just contracts with athletics departments that were under fire. Nike was facing significant backlash over the branded apparel it had so successfully marketed to ordinary university students through its College Colors program. 'It really is quite sick,' said Tom Wheatley, a student and organizer at the University of Wisconsin.
In terms of a backlash , I think part of what you're seeing, of course, is that for a long time a certain group of people
And there's been backlash -- backlash against the Chinese, backlash against the Irish backlash against the Italians--
We are seeing this backlash starting to spring up.
Did you get any backlash ?
there was always backlash about artists like Drake using a lot of African inflection in how they speak or their music.
And there was a backlash towards it and some propaganda.
same kind of backlash that is very fair and that's one thing we spend quite a lot of time thinking about uh wondering
You have the backlash then against affirmative action.
And there was massive backlash from the teachers union.
All the faith backlash .
And if you ever see it, these sort of two partially curved modernist towers facing right by Ghirardelli Square, right by the waterfront. So this backlash to growth is still with us today, and it was a response to a number of changes. But just from a political perspective, there was a ballot measure in San Francisco to protect the waterfront was the name of it.
And this backlash was like and update.
So this is a backlash against progress.
And the backlash will, it's gonna be a process of learning.
and the backlash that was continuing to the civil rights era.
it might cause a backlash if an international organization as Human Rights Watch will uh do research and
there was a backlash not unlike what we're seeing with bailouts and other things going on back in DC and the head
little bit of a backlash against it. And I like to think if I've done anything in my literary career, it's going to contribute to that backlash , so that, um so that now
the back backlash right and my book is an attempt and I hope you get a chance to take a look my book is an attempt to
and and you know backlashes and and and satires and and and everything spins around it but then it it just sucks all
And I think some of the backlash that we're seeing from society is a reflection of that, right?
And there's this sort of online backlash taking place at the moment, because even my Claude, when I speak to it sometimes
the first period of gender backlash that this country has been through. And unfortunately, I don't think it would be
a kind of data center backlash or like a repositioning from AI or or or or things like that. Do you think do you just let
I'm sure you know, you talk to lots of people involved with AI every day. Like is there a moment where it clicked for them that like this is this backlash is something they have to take seriously and is real um or has it happened yet? That's uh so I definitely think that over the past 6 months I've noticed a huge difference in how seriously people
That's uh so I definitely think that over the past 6 months I've noticed a huge difference in how seriously people in Silicon Valley take the AI backlash . Like what have you noticed?
lot of the early social media backlash to the the the election of Yeah.
company did receive a bit of backlash when it first announced it was going to be making these cars.
Right, by launching m-pesa, Vodafone lifted 200,000 households out of poverty and contributed to gender parity. But what would have the backlash been if Vodafone had not launched m-pesa? It would have been nothing.
It was a pretty big backlash , and actually, it was removed.
Now we have already seen a backlash against globalization.
And we started getting a big backlash on that.