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PM Paris Martineau Paris Martineau Senior investigative journalist on the special projects team at Consumer Reports, covering food safety and corporate misconduct.

“The way that this technology was rolled out was just terrible from a marketing perspective. They both said, we're going to take your jobs, we're going to crash the economy, and we're doing it because we have scooped up all of your data, and now you never will have to create art on your own. We'll do it for you. That's just like the worst possible pitch for a technology ever, which is wild because there's obviously a million things that AI can do. They're not that.”

Intelligent Machines (Audio) · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

“The way that this technology was rolled out was just terrible from a marketing perspective. They both said, we're going to take your jobs, we're going to crash the economy, and we're doing it because we have scooped up all of your data, and now you never will have to create art on your own. We'll do it for you. That's just like the worst possible pitch for a technology ever, which is wild because there's obviously a million things that AI can do. They're not that.” — Paris Martineau, Intelligent Machines (Audio)

Context

Asked whether any technology in a generation has met this much pushback, Martineau says the public hostility to AI and data centers comes from how the industry sold itself.

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Transcript

Intelligent Machines (Audio) Around 13:40 into the episode
Paris Martineau

I guess Google Glass is the only thing you can think of, but that is a specific product. You can't think of a product category and a broad tech category. Well, nuclear

Fr. Robert Ballecer

nerd glasses, nerd glasses, if you extend it.

Paris Martineau

Did nerd glasses have that from the jump? I guess they did from the Google Glass inception. And I similar with like nuclear energy. It maybe was a, I guess from the jump, people were pushing back against it, but not, it has become such a social, cultural, and political issue. And people on both sides of the aisle from every age and demographic group, they all seem to be aligned in their hatred of data centers and largely AI purveyors. And I think that the reason for that is the way that this technology was rolled out was just a terrible, from a marketing perspective. They both said, we're going to take your jobs, we're going to crash the economy, and we're doing it because we have scooped up all of your data, and now you never will have to create art on your own. We'll do it for you. That's just like the worst possible pitch for a technology ever, which is wild because there's obviously a million things that AI can do. They're not that.

Fr. Robert Ballecer

Right. I think it doesn't help that you had someone like Sam Altman, who is a very visible figure in AI, who actually said, if we want AI, we're just going to have to accept that some bad things are going to happen. It's like, no, no, no. Hold on. Who told you that that was something good? Say in…

Jeff Jarvis

I hear honest discussions from these cultists, the wackadoodles, the doomsters, that honestly say that at some point you cover the entire earth with data centers. The rest of life has no value next to this. Obviously, that's extreme and it's completely bonkers, but there are those who say that.…

Paris Martineau

I mean, it's also baffling. Like, the thing that is baffling to me is that the industry doesn't seem to have learned its lesson in terms of messaging yet. It was in the last week that Sam Altman said in a podcast, oh man, it's a real shame that your computers can have RAM. We should have that for…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Intelligent Machines (Audio)

“In Perry, Ohio, this tiny little village, 87% of the voters approved a measure that would require any data center that is seeking tax breaks to give a financial, bond-backed guarantee of those benefits. So if a data center developer comes in and says, this is going to generate 1,000 jobs and it's going to bring in millions of dollars in taxes every year, the city said, yes, you can do that. But we want you to put your money up.” — Fr. Robert Ballecer, Intelligent Machines (Audio) “I think when people hear things like extinction event or Dario saying warnings of doom coming imminently, they think Terminator is going to happen or that suddenly it's going to be like the Matrix. That's not a realistic thing that is going to happen. … The thing that is more realistic that I think people should be concerned about is that this technology will enable people to commit large cyber attacks much faster without having many of the skills that it used to take. … I think the most realistic doomsday concern, but it's not as pithy.” — Paris Martineau, Intelligent Machines (Audio)