The protests against data centers and Flock cameras are not about data centers or Flock cameras. They are about dread over artificial intelligence. (As I type these words at a coffee shop, the man at the next table is talking about how his son uses AI to decide what kind of pizza he wants.)

Some chalk the negative vibes up to “doomerism” — and with justification. The Washington Examiner’s David Harsanyi recently wrote that big technological leaps nearly always come with a panic, and the darkest prophecies rarely pan out. What’s more, as Harsanyi notes, the loudest alarms seem always to come from AI executives themselves who sound them to exaggerate their own importance, generate interest, and undermine competition.