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Comment by burningChrome | Hacker News Reader

The other issue is Gen Z and Gen A are now very much opposed to AI. I'm wondering with those two sets of generations who already have a very negative view of AI, how AI can survive that coming tsunami of change.

According to WRITER’s 2026 Enterprise Adoption Survey, 44% of Gen Z employees admit to sabotaging their company's AI strategy in at least one way compared to 29% of employees overall.

Sabotage behaviours include entering proprietary information into AI tools, using non-approved AI tools, refusing to use AI tools or outputs, ignoring guidelines or best practices, intentionally generating low-quality outputs, refusing to take AI training and tampering with performance metrics to make AI appear to underperform.

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> Gen Z and Gen A are now very much opposed to AI

This is true as a sentiment, but my understanding is that the majority of students are overwhelmingly using AI for ~everything. If a thing provides massive utility people will use it.

I recently sat in on a lecture at my old uni and noticed almost every student heavily using ai. So I agree it's a but heavy handed to day young people dislike ai as a monolith.

People dislike and are dependent on things all the time. What'll be interesting to see is how that classroom of students will feel towards AI when it leaves school. I am uncomfortable with AIs being used in schools this way, myself, like almost without exception. I mean, geez, how do you compete? Do you just sort of have to, once a certain number of your classmates uses it for stuff like essays? Do they curve essays anymore?

When students are provided work sheets, assessments and powerpoint slides made by AI, its no surprise that students resort to AI to assist or complete these.

Garbage in, Garbage out.

The University market is brutal too. If you aren't using AI too, you are falling behind. Many see it as a means to an end.

I was reading a week or so ago how like only 40% of kids can read or do math by hand, and are graduating high school, and I still cannot comprehend it.

Well, one thing about AI... if it does become our overlords, maybe it won't be so eager to be wheedled into giving passing grades. :/

Have you read the research that says AIs are more likely to react favourably to output based on their own model compared to those of a different AI model? Guessing teachers subconsciously grade similarly, like people who use one model get more of some grade than people who use another one...

Guessing this is also why so many liberal arts majors are being cut.

I 'sorta' get why people might use AI in a required class though I am not for it, but why major in something and do it? I mean aside from wanting money (and, really, many of those majors don't make much).

> I recently sat in on a lecture at my old uni and noticed almost every student heavily using ai.

But are they also paying for it? Or simply using the free version because it's available?

Do "entering proprietary information into AI tools", "using non-approved AI tools", and "ignoring guidelines and best practices" really count as sabotaging an AI strategy because you are opposed to it? An over-enthusiastic early adopter would do all three.

> The other issue is Gen Z and Gen A are now very much opposed to AI.

They say they are, but they have actually been using it so much that they can't even do they homework without AI at this point.

Goomba fallacy

I'm an advocate for these new tools we have, and by that definition I would be included.

Very open definition of sabotage.

The utility of AI is too high for the opposition to be real. It's like money or heroin. Someone who says money is the root of all evil will likely take a billion dollars if offered if for free.

Everybody says they hate heroin but once you try it, you can't get enough of it.

You can simultaneously hate something and be addicted to it. Addiction and liking are not the same thing.

You can also simultaneously hate AND like something. People addicted to heroin, believe it or not, both love and hate it.

Most addictive drug users eventually stop on their own. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-cure-your...

Also new heroin users are only 30% likely to become addicted. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

Are they really opposed to AI or are they just opposed to anything that old people do/like, just like every generation? The moment they get their own AI that us dinosaurs don't understand they'll be all over it.

> compared to 29% of employees overall

That seems a rather high baseline, maybe even more significant than younger generations putting another 50% on top of it as they are wont to do.

ChatGPT is <4 years old. It is the new thing. If jt followed every other technology trend, they should be the biggest proponents.

Some are; you can't make sweeping generalizations about a nuanced topic.

But I do believe (gut feeling) the novelty's worn off for a lot of people.

> The other issue is Gen Z and Gen A are now very much opposed to AI.

Jinxzi has Bernard as friend though

Ironically, I think AI boosters are probably turning into AI's biggest obstacle right now. I see so much "adapt or die!" bullshit here (people literally saying that!), and yet when I talk to other professionals I know in real life everybody is just kind of sick of all this. It's utterly exhausting and the AI industry is looking and acting more and more desperate. They've basically put themselves in a stupid position where it has to replace everyone's job for the investment to even make sense, and it's just not happening. I'm longing for the day when the investment money runs out and the grifters go grift on something else.

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