Breakthroughs in scientific reasoning should be celebrated. But much of the hostility toward AI is not hostility toward the technology-it is distrust of the people and institutions controlling it. Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, and similar companies often speak as if entire professions-software, law, writing, and others-are simply destined for extinction. Anthropic has also benefited from a powerful doom narrative: emphasize catastrophic risk, then present itself as the responsible solution. Add concerns about copyrighted books and creative work being absorbed without meaningful consent, confidential client knowledge potentially being used to enter adjacent businesses, extreme concentrations of power, and an increasingly arrogant tone-and the backlash becomes understandable. People are not necessarily rejecting intelligence or scientific progress. They are rejecting a future in which a handful of executives claim ownership of that progress, devalue everyone else’s work, and demand trust without sufficient consent, accountability, or reciprocity. The problem is not AI. It is unaccountable power wrapped in the language of inevitability.