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 Recent college graduates face technology conscription: the expectation to feed, train, and validate the very AI models designed to automate their future career paths.

• The Flashpoint: Intellectual extraction and job devaluation. Graduates see AI corporations scraping human creativity, engineering, and writing without equitable compensation, creating an unstable economic future.
• The Tipping Point: Instead of burning draft cards, modern graduates are engaging in digital resistance—refusing to apply to major AI firms, deploying data-poisoning tools to protect their portfolios, and organizing labor walkouts over algorithmic ethics.
• The Split: A growing contingent of young professionals is choosing to boycott corporate AI completely. They are migrating to decentralized networks, open-source communities, and localized worker-owned tech collectives.

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Direct Comparison: Two Historical Divorces

The table below breaks down how these two systemic walkouts contrast in their execution, motives, and final resolutions:

Feature	The 1969 YAF Split	The Recent College Grad / AI Split
Primary Catalyst	State conscription to fight the Vietnam War.	Economic displacement and automated exploitation.
Opposing Authority	Traditionalist, Cold War conservative leaders.	Big Tech executives and corporate venture capitalists.
Act of Defiance	Physically burning a draft card on the convention floor.	Data-poisoning, model boycotts, and refusing corporate recruitment.
Immediate Result	A literal walkout from the convention hall.	A refusal to enter the mainstream tech workforce pipeline.
Long-term Alternative	Founding the U.S. Libertarian Party and independent caucuses.	Building decentralized tech, localized cooperatives, and open-source models.

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The Fundamental Contrast: Ideology vs. Survival

The core distinction between these two historic events lies in the nature of the stakes.

The 1969 split was primarily ideological and philosophical. The libertarians in YAF revolted because they refused to compromise their purist principles regarding individual liberty, free markets, and anti-interventionism. They were willing to forfeit their political capital within the broader conservative movement to maintain their philosophical purity.

Conversely, the current split between university graduates and AI firms is born out of material and economic survival. Graduates are not merely debating abstract theories of liberty in a convention hall; they are defending their literal livelihoods, the value of their degrees, and the ownership of their intellectual labor.

When the 1969 libertarians walked out under the St. Louis Gateway Arch, they did so to build a new political vehicle. When today's graduates walk away from AI tech corporations, they do so to build an alternative economy before the old one automates them out entirely.

Some months ago, when I was testing some LLMs in Amazon Bedrock in my own personal account console, I prompted Bedrock to produce a framework for collectively organizing Amazon Web Service employees.  Using a notoriously anti-union company's commercial resources to source a collective bargaining strategy for worker rights seemed like an interesting experiment.  Combining those results into learning objects and creating an interactive mini-course yielded the result below. Beware

In April, the makers of Claude shared that the company's new AI model (Mythos 5) was too dangerous to release to the public. Weeks later, thanks to some tweaks, the new model (called Fable 5) was released to the public. Now, it has been announced that "Anthropic has suspended its powerful new AI model after US authorities raised security concerns just days following its public release."

I find some irony in these AI names. Mythos and Fables indeed.

MORE    Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI suspended over security fears  

 

David Pogue on Substack writes that "When you do a Google search these days, you generally see an AI Overview panel above the search results. It’s intended to summarize the answers to your query, so you don’t have to click any links. The first problem: By Google’s own calculations, the AI Overviews are incorrect 28% of the time. The bigger problem: AI is an environmental disaster. It’s already a monstrous energy hog, and its appetite is doubling every six months."

 He gives some data about this data center power situation:

• 4,200 data centers that AI companies have built and 1,500 more are going up as you read this
• By 2030, AI will consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity. That is enough to power every household in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania combined. Almost incomprehensible.
• 60% of that power will come from polluting power sources.
• Don’t care about the environment? How about your power bill? AI’s power needs have driven up electricity costs as much as 15% in the last year, with another 8.5% hike coming by the end of 2026.
• Add in more rolling blackouts during heat waves this summer.

But it’s not just Google, because almost every big company is eager to add AI to their products.

Pogue's note of hope is that a few people, like Sheila Morovati, are trying to make AI optional. Morovati is the founder and president of a nonprofit called HabitsofWaste.org. Her movement is called Opt-In AI with a goal of no AI at all unless someone asks for it. The default setting should be the most sustainable and least annoying option.

More at Rise Up, People! Make AI Optional! - David Pogue