A recent survey reveals that while Generation Z uses AI more frequently than any other age group, a significant portion now views the technology with increasing anger and frustration.
The Financial Times reports that while AI was initially marketed as a tool to enhance productivity, creativity, and employability for young people, many members of Generation Z are now expressing serious doubts about its actual impact on their lives and career prospects.
In the United States, approximately half of Gen Z individuals, defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, report using generative AI at least once per week. However, a recent Gallup poll found that 31 percent of this demographic said the technology made them feel angry, up from 22 percent the previous year. These findings were corroborated by interviews with young adults across three continents, many describing a relationship marked by both dependence on and frustration with AI.
Misha, a 24-year-old who recently completed a master’s degree in computing at Imperial College London, worried that AI advances had diminished the value of his coding skills. “It feels like junior software developers are basically just micromanaging AI at this point,” he said.
The job application process has become particularly challenging for recent graduates. Many describe AI as having transformed job hunting into an arms race, where applicants use chatbots to generate ever more applications while employers deploy algorithms to filter the flood of submissions. Candidates often navigate multiple rounds of automated interviews before ever speaking with a human recruiter.
A recent study led by Stanford University researchers examined one popular gamified assessment platform and found that jobseekers would need to apply for at least 25 different positions to be almost certain of receiving at least one recommendation to advance. Many graduates report submitting hundreds of applications without a single offer.
Lucy, a 24-year-old who works in marketing at a current affairs magazine, was blunt. “The world of job applications is broken,” she said. She turned to approaching hiring managers in person and sending cold emails in hopes of being acknowledged by a human.
Beyond the workplace, many young people complained that AI made it harder to distinguish fact from fiction. Lucy noted that AI-generated images have given politicians plausible deniability when compromising footage emerges. “When you see an image, that should be able to be used as concrete evidence. It isn’t anymore,” she said. “It’s bleeding across all aspects of the media. You just don’t know what to trust.”
Eliza Castell, 25, who works for a British MP, said politicians increasingly use phrases such as “I rise to speak” in the House of Commons, which OpenAI’s ChatGPT often uses when asked to write a parliamentary speech. She said: “There’s this anxiety that if you’re just using AI to do everything, are you not just proving your job can be done by AI?”
The backlash against AI has been very clear at college commencements this year. In one prominent example, former Google boss and Democrat mega donor Eric Schmidt faced widespread booing while praising AI:
The crowd’s disapproval grew particularly loud as Schmidt’s speech turned to AI, a topic that has raised concerns among critics about potential massive job displacement for new graduates entering the workforce. “I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear,” Schmidt said, briefly struggling to be heard over the sustained booing.
Schmidt acknowledged the anxieties facing the graduating class, describing their concerns as understandable. “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create,” he stated, calling these fears “rational” before urging young people to adapt to changing circumstances.
As booing graduates across the country demonstrate the accuracy of polling data, AI is proving to be a divisive topic for America’s youth. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AIto serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at the Financial Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
