AI Giants Try Charm Offensive To Soothe the Public Backlash

“Artificial-intelligence companies appear to be organizing around a simple message in the face of rising public anxiety about the negative potential effects of their world-changing technology: We come in peace.

 

OpenAI this week published a populist wish list of policy proposals that zeroes in on worries like job replacement and wealth concentration, floating such ideas as a four-day workweek and an AI-invested public-wealth fund distributed to citizens.

 

Those proposals come as its rival Anthropic has been signing partnerships and building tools for such sectors as consulting and software, where share prices have been whacked by investor worries that they will be replaced by AI. Anthropic's efforts have helped push up shares of tech companies including LegalZoom.com.

 

Anthropic and OpenAI are each pursuing ventures to help private equity, a big owner of companies in sectors ripe for disruption, with AI transformation. (Those efforts could also yield lucrative new business customers.)

 

Call it confidence building for the AI era. The biggest AI companies for a long time amassed marketing mileage and new customers by touting the nearly godlike transformational potential of their tools. The dangers they talked about felt like far-off science fiction.

 

Now, as some businesses, investors and individuals become more concerned about who will be swamped in that transformation, the companies are making a pivot to trying to help manage the downside.

 

"We do feel an urgency to this conversation," Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, told The Wall Street Journal recently.

 

Some business leaders have started warning that AI disruption might come faster than society can adjust. "There's a real risk artificial intelligence could widen wealth inequality," BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink wrote in his annual shareholder letter in March.

 

An OpenAI spokeswoman said the company is seeking to be proactive in its approach to prompting conversations about AI and its rapid advance. "That means coming to the table with real solutions that are as transformative as the underlying technology," she said.

 

A handful of recent polls show that the hottest AI labs will have to reassure a wary public. Americans appear profoundly apprehensive about the potential impact of AI on society, with concerns ranging from widespread job losses to broad cybersecurity threats.

 

A March poll from Quinnipiac University found that while AI use is increasing, 55% of Americans believe more harm than good will come from the technology in their daily lives. That is up from 44% in a poll last year. An NBC News poll conducted in late February and early March found that AI had a net favorability rating below that of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

 

In the past, OpenAI has opposed some policies and candidates seeking to regulate the industry, said Amba Kak, a former AI adviser to the Federal Trade Commission.

 

But broad skepticism and fear about the impact of AI have made opposing all regulation untenable for tech company CEOs, said Kak, who is co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which has advocated for AI regulation.

 

If they can't oppose every policy, "What's the next best move?" she asked. "It's to place yourself in the driver's seat, and that is what every single one of them is doing."

 

Some research has stoked fear among workers that if their jobs aren't replaced, work will become more demanding and intense. One study looking at a sample of workers showed that AI adoption, rather than freeing workers to focus on the more creative aspects of their jobs, led them to double the time they spent on things like email and business-management tools. Time spent on focused, concentrated work fell.

 

Political operators such as Steve Bannon and investors including Vinod Khosla have issued warnings about AI's rising popularity and urged companies to take steps to brighten what has become a dystopian societal conversation about the technology.

 

OpenAI recently went as far as purchasing the podcast TBPN, which is known in part for its tech-booster vibe. The podcast, which will fall under Lehane, a veteran political communicator, aligns with what appears to be a broader effort by tech companies to shape the narrative around AI.

 

AI's rising unpopularity has the potential to stymie the growth of the AI boom, especially since continued growth will rely on a vast build-out of computing-data centers all over the world. Some local officials and activists have begun to push back on data-center plans, objecting to the threat of utility cost increases and job losses.

 

Major market disruptions, like the $1.6 trillion meltdown that hit software stocks earlier this year, could prove dangerous if they hit swaths of customers that the big AI companies are relying on to help make big investments profitable.

 

Anthropic has been perhaps the most vocal company about the need to study and stave off potentially negative impacts of artificial intelligence. The company's societal-impacts team has published research on topics like how professionals use AI, and Anthropic recently started an in-house think tank to consider issues such as AI's impact on jobs or its threat to social cohesion.

 

Anthropic and OpenAI have been striking deals with consultants to help promote the use of their technology, turning an army of workers at risk of disruption into evangelists.

 

Anthropic is expanding its team of "applied AI engineers" who can embed within organizations to help improve productivity with AI. The company is also focused on providing training programs to third-party consulting companies that can do similar work, said Paul Smith, Anthropic's chief commercial officer.

 

The company wants to "backstop an ecosystem of people out there," Smith said in an interview with the Journal. "You're going to see us investing a lot more in things like training and certifications" in which they can attest that someone in a partner organization can help a bank or other company make better use of AI tools, he said.”” [1]

 

1. AI Giants Try Charm Offensive To Soothe the Public Backlash. Olson, Bradley; Schechner, Sam.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 09 Apr 2026: B1.