Here's something genuinely strange that's happening right now. 44% of Gen Z workers admit they're actively sabotaging their company's AI strategy. Not just complaining about it, not dragging their feet on training, actually sabotaging it, entering proprietary information into public chat bots, refusing to use mandated AI tools, deliberately generating lowquality output to make the technology look ineffective. Nearly half of the youngest workers in the professional world are working against the technology their bosses are betting billions on. And before you write this off as young people being resistant to change, just stop and think about that for a second. Gen Z grew up with algorithmic systems. They're digital natives. Basically, usually young people love new innovations. This is the generation that adopted smartphones, social media, streaming platforms faster than anyone else. So, what is exactly different about AI? I'm El. I have a PhD in computer science and I analyze AI developments to understand what's actually happening beneath all of this hype. And when you look at the public data on this, the surveys, the sentiment tracking, the actual behavioral patterns, something becomes very clear. This is not resistance to technology. This is more resistance to a specific power structure being built with technology. Let me show you what I mean.

Start with the sentiment data because it's honestly remarkable. Over the past year, excitement about AI among Gen Z dropped 14 percentage points to just 22%. Hopefulness fell nine points to 18%. Anger increase 9 points to 31%. But here's what makes this wild. Even daily AI users, which would be people who use these tools every single day, saw their excitement drop 18 points and hopefulness drop 11 points over the same period. Just think about that. The more they use it, the less hopeful they become. So, it's not just unfamiliarity breeding fear. It sounds more like familiarity breeding understanding. Meanwhile, at universities, you're seeing open rebellion. The University of Pennsylvania student newspaper published an editorial titled Penn has an AI problem that opened with, I'm quoting, “AI cannot coexist with education. It can only degrade it. As technology advances and workers are replaced by machines, schools are some of the only places we have left to explore and wrestle with human thought.” This is basically the first Ivy League school to launch an AI major. They're at the epicenter of AI adoption and higher education. Penn now offers 10 undergraduate programs, 21 graduate programs, and eight doctoral programs in AI. And their own students are writing that AI is degrading education. 83% of pen undergraduates admit to using AI in academic settings, which means they're not writing from ignorance. They're writing from direct experience with what happens when you can outsource thinking to a chatbot.

So on one side, you have executives pushing AI adoptions as fast as possible. And on the other side, you have the people actually being told to use it, saying this is making things worse. Which raises the obvious question of course, what do the executives themselves think is happening? Here's where it actually gets genuinely absurd. A survey of nearly 6,000 senior executives across US, UK, Germany, and Australia found something absolutely remarkable. 90% of executives report that AI has had no impact on employment or productivity at their firms over the past 3 years. We actually have a separate long video analysis on this specific part. 90% nine out of 10 companies deploying AI are admitting in a survey publicly that it has done nothing measurable. 69% of firms are actively using AI. So most companies have successfully deployed a technology that successfully does well maybe nothing. That's actually impressive in its own way, right? But it actually gets even better. 75% of executives admit their company's AI strategy is more for show than a meaningful guide to outcomes. So it's not a leak, not a criticism from the outside. Executives admitting it in a survey. Three-quarters of them know their AI strategy is performative and they're continuing to execute the performance strategy anyway. Why? 73% of CEOs report stress or anxiety about their company's AI strategy and 64% fear losing their jobs if they fail to lead the AI transition. So the logic basically becomes I'm afraid of getting fired for not deploying AI fast enough. So, I'm deploying AI. I know it doesn't work to protect myself from getting fired for not deploying AI. It's like watching somebody build a parachute while actively jumping out of the plane. Right? Meanwhile, 48% of executives call AI adoption a massive disappointment. Only 29% of organizations see significant ROI from generative AI and 23% from AI Asians.

But here's the mechanism underneath all of this. There is a massive gap opening up between executives and workers. And it's not really about skill, but about power. 64% of executives use AI for two hours or more daily. Only 28% of regular employees do the same. Some executives are living with a chatbot window open for their entire workday. Nearly one in five executives lock four to five hours daily with an AI model. One in 25 use AI for more than 6 hours a day. 6 hours. That's more than a full-time's job worth of chatbot conversation. At what point does your job become talking to the robot about doing your job? And 92% of executives say they're actively cultivating an AI elite within their organizations. They're not even hiding the two-tier system they're building. Right? Which brings us back to the sabotage of workers who admitted to sabotaging their company's AI. 30% cited fear that AI would take their own job. 26% cited poorly executed company AI strategy. So, it's not just job displacement anxiety. Although that is definitely real. A quarter of them were sabotaging because the strategy is actually bad. And the sabotage methods are kind of brilliant in how simple they are. Some workers feed proprietary company data into public AI chatbots, creating security risks. Others refuse to use mandated tools. Some deliberately produce lowquality AI output without fixing it or tamper with performance reviews to make AI appear less effective. Just imagine filling out a performance review about a chatbot. Chad GPT shows poor initiative and struggles with feedback. Does not take direction well would not promote. But the thing is workers cannot vote on AI adoption. They can block budget decisions. This is one of the only forms of leverage they actually have. Make the technology unreliable one bad output at a time. And the executive's response was threats. 77% of executives say employees who refuse to become proficient in AI won't be considered for promotions or leadership roles. 60% are considering layoffs for workers who refuse to adopt AI. So the plan is basically to not promote nearly half your youngest workers who are also your future leadership pipeline. Well, that is I think bull succession planning.

Are we all seeing how generally insane this is? Here's what I think is actually happening underneath all of this. Gen Z did not grow up naive about technology. They know what they're doing. They grew up watching social platforms exploit their attention, gig economy apps erode worker protections, and companies automate jobs out of existence while celebrating efficiency on earnings calls. They watched Facebook and Google consolidate platform power while claiming to democratize information. They watched the gig economy promise flexibility and deliver procarity. They watched algorithmic feeds promise connection and deliver addiction. Now they're watching executives deploy AI with the exact same framing. This will empower everyone. This will make work more meaningful. This will free you up for creative tasks. While the actual architecture concentrates control at the executive layer. 80% of Gen Z trust AI more than their manager for certain work task. That's not a vote of confidence on AI, although it could be seen in some aspects, but is definitely a vote of no confidence in management. ... The sabotage is not technological resistance. It's labor resistance to a power grab dressed as innovation. And the fact that even daily users are becoming less hopeful about AI the more they use it tells us something very important. The problem is not unfamiliarity. The problem is what becomes visible with familiarity. Universities are shifting to in-person exams because take-home work has become unaccessible. Companies are implementing location tracking because they cannot trust output quality. Executives are admitting their strategies are performative while threatening workers into compliance. This is what happens when you try to force adoption of a technology before you figured out what it's actually for. The generation that will live with AI longer than anyone else presently alive is sending a very clear signal. The question is whether anyone with decision-making power is actually listening.