In 2026, the politics of AI has a new meta: “caring a lot about AI” is no longer correlated with “knowing a lot about AI.” AI is rising in salience faster than any other issue among US voters. Politicians gearing up for the 2026 midterms and 2028 primaries won’t lag far behind. That means AI policy is no longer the remit of a few wonky technocrats. From now until forever, most people regulating, protesting, and talking about AI will not be interested in AI per se, but rather how it impacts their preexisting belief systems and political agendas. These forces are stronger, more diffuse, and more volatile than we have seen in AI policy before. And the curve is just about to shoot straight up.

I define AI populism as a worldview in which AI is viewed not only as a normal technology but as an elite political project to be resisted. It regards AI as a thing manufactured by out-of-touch billionaires and pushed onto an unwilling public to achieve sinister aims like “capitalist efficiency” (layoffs) and “population management” (surveillance). AI populists don’t really care whether ChatGPT is personally useful, or if Waymos eke out some safety gains: AI’s utility as a tool is immaterial relative to the unwelcome societal change it represents.

Among the public, AI populism shows up as individual attempts to block AI encroachment; for example, data center NIMBYism, AI witchhunts among creatives, and in the extreme, assassination attempts like what happened to Altman this week.

[...]

What seems likely is that the anti-elite and nihilistic attitudes that have dominated US political culture in the last few years are transmuting into anger at AI billionaires. Young people are particularly incensed. Gen Z already grew up in a world that they felt was shrinking, where grift and shitcoins and sports gambling looked like the only paths up. Now, they’re being told AI is the reason they can’t get a job—and potentially never will. Just as the United Healthcare CEO seemed like a justified target to many disillusioned and radicalized young people, so will AI executives be to many more.