The most effective strategy for AI companies to manage public backlash is to make their products pragmatically helpful to as many people as possible. Instead of just warning about disruption ('yelling fire'), companies should focus their communication on providing tools ('paddles') that help people navigate the changes.

New technologies perceived as job-destroying, like AI, face significant public and regulatory risk. A powerful defense is to make the general public owners of the technology. When people have a financial stake in a technology's success, they are far more likely to defend it than fight against it.

Consumer fear of GMOs is entrenched and funded, making education efforts ineffective. A better strategy is to use newer technologies like AI-driven breeding or CRISPR to achieve the same goals without triggering irrational consumer backlash, effectively sidestepping the debate.

Initial public fear over new technologies like AI therapy, while seemingly negative, is actually productive. It creates the social and political pressure needed to establish essential safety guardrails and regulations, ultimately leading to safer long-term adoption.

Surveys show public panic about AI's impact on jobs and society. However, revealed preferences—actual user behavior—show massive, enthusiastic adoption for daily tasks, from work to personal relationships. Watch what people do, not what they say.

The current AI narrative often removes human agency, creating fear. Reframing AI's capabilities as tools that empower people—much like how Steve Jobs pitched personal computers—can make the technology more inspiring and less threatening to the general public, fostering wider acceptance.

AI leaders' messaging about world-ending risks, while effective for fundraising, creates public fear. To gain mainstream acceptance, the industry needs a Steve Jobs-like figure to shift the narrative from AI as an autonomous, job-killing force to AI as a tool that empowers human potential.

The tech industry often builds technologies first imagined in dystopian science fiction, inadvertently realizing their negative consequences. To build a better future, we need more utopian fiction that provides positive, ambitious blueprints for innovation, guiding progress toward desirable outcomes.

Unlike other tech rollouts, the AI industry's public narrative has been dominated by vague warnings of disruption rather than clear, tangible benefits for the average person. This communication failure is a key driver of widespread anxiety and opposition.