It's Hot Luddite Summer.
As the mood of the nation sours on Silicon Valley's vision for the future, Flock cameras and data centers have become personae non grata in several communities. In many ways, they are physical manifestations of artificial intelligence -- an incorporeal technology -- that's fueling both big dreams and new nightmares.
On Thursday, amid mounting public pressure, Flock announced changes aimed at addressing fears over access to license-plate data its cameras collect across the country for law-enforcement agencies and other customers.
That blowback comes as a rush to build out data centers for AI has sparked backlashes in several states, becoming a major political issue in elections that will decide gubernatorial races and control of Congress in November. Even American music legend Willie Nelson has joined the broader fight.
But it's more than just opposing AI. The protests are a symptom of a yearning for an American ideal without AI.
It's a vibe, perhaps, best captured in a social-media meme catching fire this summer that highlights videos of old trucks, classic rock and a simpler way of life. Or, as the meme says: "This and never hearing about AI again."
Terah Lynn, a 37-year-old manufacturing supervisor in Nashville, helped spark the meme with posts on her @TerahBuilds Instagram and TikTok accounts that went viral and were soon copied.
"I think that AI can very easily take the human participation out of your own life and then you become reliant," Lynn told me. "The people creating it have the responsibility to create ethically but the consumer also has to be able to discipline themselves, and I have never met a human who really, truly has harnessed that power to perfection."
She worries about what we will lose to such temptations. While she doesn't see herself as being political, the collective concerns of many like her are proving to be a force of their own up and down ballots. And that is hard for tech companies to combat as they race to spend trillions of dollars collectively to build a new world around their technology.
It's the kind of fraught moment that reminds Brendan Steinhauser of his involvement in the creation of the Tea Party a generation ago. That movement, too, rose up through social media, without an initial central figurehead, before becoming a political force that has rewritten many political fortunes.
Steinhauser now leads the bipartisan AI group called the Alliance for Secure AI, which has been lobbying Congress for regulations. "When elected officials or companies stiff-arm people or ignore them or denigrate them, that's when people get pissed off, that's when you get the Tea Party stuff or you get something similar on the left," he said. "And I think the power of this is both -- it's the blue-haired ladies and it's the bubbas all together with different signs but showing up for the same protest."
At one extreme, you've got activists calling for a pause of AI development, worried about the safety of such systems. They fear AI will wipe out jobs or, even worse, humanity itself.
Those are fears that leading labs OpenAI and Anthropic helped fuel -- unwittingly -- with years of talk about the scary downside of AI. Both companies are now fending off attacks, including violent ones, even as they rush to create more advanced systems.
Then there are those people showing up at city halls in communities across the country to protest the construction of data centers crucial for AI. At the root of their worries are typical NIMBY complaints.
They're worried about water usage and electricity prices. But, they sometimes seem to harbor a nagging suspicion that their local officials are selling them out for big businesses.
It's a conflict that carries hues of classic rural-urban divides. In recent weeks, "outlaw country" music star Nelson issued a statement against AI data centers near his home in central Texas. "The last thing we need is a loud, water thieving, light polluting, data center anywhere near our town," Nelson wrote late last month.
There are plans to more than quadruple the number of data centers in Texas, according to Cleanview, which tracks such developments. These types of projects have become a big topic in the Texas gubernatorial race where Gov. Greg Abbott is facing criticism from Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa, a state representative, for his past support of big tech.
In something of a reversal, the governor recently ordered regulators to halt connecting data centers to the state's power grid while projects undergo audits for such things as water and electric usage. It's a move that drew criticism from President Trump, a fellow Republican. "For Texas to say no to data centers is a mistake," Trump told Punchbowl News. "Data centers could be bigger than oil."
Finally, there are the concerns about privacy tied to automated license plate-readers made popular by Flock, which use AI for tracking vehicles. While the company and authorities have defended the technology for helping fight crime, reports of misuse have only fanned the flame this summer.
That's minted a new generation of folk heroes for their acts of resistance, such as Carl "The Flock Blocker" Gunn, who has attracted attention for using a sign on a long pole to block cameras in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Flock cameras and data centers worry Lynn, the factory supervisor, who moonlights as a social-media influencer. She acknowledges there's a bit of irony in her AI fears given she has been able to build a side hustle with blue-collar-themed content thanks to social-media platforms reliant on algorithms.
"It's this crazy balance of irony that we have to exist in," Lynn said. "My thing is: Can I build...the kind of life to which I can decide how much I want to participate in this system that I, honestly, don't fully agree with?"
At the heart of the protests across the country, that is the question being asked: Do we get to decide the future that AI unleashes?
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