Technology Young People Hate AI CEOs So Passionately That It’s Almost Hard to Believe

[The Helper]

A decade ago, young adults were flocking to vaunted tech giants like Google and Apple in pursuit of exciting jobs on the cutting edge of tech.

In 2026, however, the status quo of young people who are uncritically enamored with the tech industry and its billionaire overlords has gone completely out the window.

A new survey conducted by CNBC‘s Generation Labs asked over 1,000 US adults aged between 18 and 34 to share their thoughts on politics, AI, and the country’s economy.

A particularly interesting branch of questions polled participants on their views of nine executives overseeing AI companies, and the results were dismal. Asked “who do you trust to act responsibly on AI?” the vast majority of participants said they “don’t trust” any of the nine figures. Palantir’s extremely controversial CEO Alex Karp scored the lowest, with 81 percent choosing “don’t trust,” while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella fared the best — albeit with a pitiful 35 percent “trust” score.

Everyone else fell in between: 79 percent of respondents said they don’t trust Peter Thiel, while a whopping 71, 70, and 69 percent said they “don’t trust” Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman, respectively (Musk will probably be mad he didn’t get that 69 figure.)

Young People Hate AI CEOs So Passionately That It's Almost Hard to Believe

A new survey of 1,000 young adults in the US found that nine of the top tech executives are deeply loathed.

futurism.com

 

[Ghan]

The rise of socialist leftist ideology has poisoned the minds of the younger generation into hating success regardless of how it is achieved. In the modern world, success is assumed to having taken advantage of some people somewhere, which is obvious tripe. Yet this is what drives the outcomes from these polls.

Certainly there are things you can criticize about every one of the figures on the page - Microsoft (and others) doing mass layoffs is not a great look and indicative of poor company management, but that doesn't mean Satya Nadella is dumb or hasn't led Microsoft to some accomplishments. They still employ tons of people. They still make products that people are (for now) buying. Windows, for all its flaws, makes peoples' lives better. Azure, despite the ways that The Cloud(tm) has been overblown, helps businesses run their operations more efficiently and become more successful themselves, which helps employ more people, giving them money to spend on things they want.

The economy is a lot more complicated than a few names at the top of these big companies. In cases like Elon, they are instrumental in the org's success. SpaceX and Tesla wouldn't be where they are without him. No one here is a saint, but to me it's a bit rich for these poll respondents to shit on these people who are making their lives overall better, especially since they themselves likely know so little about AI that you could take their entire knowledge on the subject, shove it up an ant's ass, and it would rattle around like a bb in a box car.

Hey, young people. You're standing on the shoulders of giants and think you're really tall. Get off your supposed moral high ground and go build something yourself. Go be someone deserving of the trust you're so unwilling to hand out.