Supporters of artificial intelligence (AI) paint the fast-growing technology as a panacea for labor shortages, spiraling business demands, and the complexity of 21st-century life. So it’s probably no surprise that businesses throughout the supply chain—and seemingly every other sector, too—are scrambling to incorporate AI-powered chatbots, agents, and robots into their operations.
But have you talked about this trend with anyone under 30? As the father of a 21- and a 23-year-old, I can offer a first-hand report from the front lines. And the takeaway is this: If you want to hire workers from Generation Z to replace the retiring Boomers, you’d better curb the impulse to sprinkle AI fairy dust over every corporate function.
Bring up the topic of AI with a young professional or recent college grad, and you’ll quickly find that their skepticism runs deep. These are “digital natives” who grew up in front of smartphones, so they’ve seen countless examples of alluring new apps and such that turned out to be nothing more than marketing traps designed to collect their personal data and profit off the results.
For proof of the zeitgeist, you need look no further than the university graduation speech circuit in the spring of 2026. Usually these speeches are lighthearted filler interspersed with a few clever jokes and bits of wisdom, meant to inspire graduating seniors to apply their gifts to solving the world’s problems. But this year that script got flipped when students at the University of Central Florida, Middle Tennessee State University, and the University of Arizona booed speakers extolling the wonders of AI.
The resistance to AI is not confined to a few unruly college crowds. Many consumers are also wary—and with good reason. Aside from concerns about AI hallucinations (when the tech simply fabricates answers to questions it cannot answer) and AI workslop (cases where it generates low-quality content that takes more effort to read than it did to write), there are a number of other major downsides.
An obvious strike against the technology is that it threatens to eliminate jobs by automating tasks that require basic, repetitive white-collar keyboard labor. In other words, exactly the type of work that generations of young entrants into the workforce have taken on as interns and new hires, allowing them to learn the ropes of a new business. Take away that incubator for eager young professionals, and hiring experienced workers for your business could soon feel like trying to field a major league baseball team after shutting down your minor league squad.
A second strike against AI is that its physical infrastructure is wildly unsustainable, relying on expensive imported microprocessors; consuming millions, if not billions, of gallons of water per day; and burning through mindboggling amounts of electricity, threatening supply. And the proposed fix for the electricity problem is unlikely to assuage anyone’s concerns: AI “hyperscalers” like Google and Amazon have proposed addressing the looming shortage by building nuclear power plants. Generation Z has seen this movie before, and it didn’t end well. Remember, these kids were schooled on examples of careless overconsumption: They’ve seen runaway climate change in the Amazon rainforest, empty reservoirs behind the Glen Canyon Dam, and deadly radiation at the Chernobyl power plant.
A third strike against AI is that it is expensive to use. Like most Silicon Valley disruptive technologies, the rush to claim market share is always followed by the need to “monetize” the new platform in order to justify those massive investments. Today, many entry-level AI models are still free to use. But the gold-rush stage never lasts forever. Already, some corporations are limiting their employees’ use of artificial intelligence.
Many signs point to a change in the outlook for AI. The technology’s initial sugar high is burning off quickly, like a kid who ate too much cotton candy at the ballpark … or a Gen Zer who spent too much time on social media.
