The 2026 midterms made one thing clear: Voters are “mad at” AI, as political strategist Rob Flaherty put it.

On the podcast Machine Gods, Flaherty notes that “the story people are saying to themselves is, ‘This thing is in my backyard. It is being used to train stuff that’s gonna take my job away, and I get no say over any of this, and I’m really mad about that.’” An NBC exit poll found that 56% of voters said that AI and data centers were a “crucial or major factor” in their vote for Congress.

It’s obvious that people hate data centers. But workers resent AI rollouts in their workplaces, too. Data tracked on Blood in the Machine shows office worker sentiment toward AI dropped from 81% positive in 2019 to just 43% positive (with 53% negative) by 2026, listing “force-fed tools” as a major grievance. A Gallup global study reported that 74% of Americans are worried about AI, driven by widespread anxiety over job obsolescence and automated layoffs.

These voters are American employees, many of whom are being asked by their employers to “transform” their work lives with AI. You might be thinking: How can someone who voted against fast-moving AI on Tuesday be open and willing to experiment with AI at scale in their work lives? The answer is they can’t. We have a negative bias towards uncertainty, and our AI future is the ultimate uncertainty. Nobody knows what’s going to happen.

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