{"slug": "tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study", "title": "Tech CEOs Overwhelmingly Distrusted by Young: Study", "summary": "A CNBC and Generation Lab study of 18- to 34-year-olds found that a majority distrust nine major AI industry leaders, with Palantir CEO Alex Karp facing the highest distrust at 81%, followed by Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel at 79%, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman each at about 75%. The survey also found that 45% of respondents believe AI's impact on their careers will be negative, and nearly 80% expressed negative sentiment about the U.S. economy.", "body_md": "Would you believe me if I said the young really, really, really, don’t trust tech CEOs? Well get ready to pick your jaw up off the floor, because a new study from CNBC and the Generation Lab says it’s true.\n\nIn recent years, CNBC has worked a lot with this guy named Cyrus Beschloss who co-founded [the Generation Lab](https://www.generationlab.org/) (It’s a DC research company). CNBC hosts will sometimes have Beschloss on as a talking head, and his job, as a fun little interruption of the regular CNBC program, will be to explain what in the world the youngs think about all this, and he’ll say what we all know: The youngs *hate* all this! A lot!\n\nHere’s Beschloss communicating this a year ago:\n\nAnd a few days ago, CNBC and the Generation Lab did it again. They [released a new study of 18- 34-year-olds](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/13/cnbc-poll-half-of-those-18-to-34-view-democratic-socialism-positively.html), and, well:\n\nWhen given the names of nine key people in the AI industry and asked whether they trust each leader to act responsibly on AI, in each case a majority of respondents said they don’t.\n\nBy the numbers:\n\n- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: about 65% distrusted\n- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg: about 70% distrusted\n- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: about 70% distrusted\n- SpaceX CEO Elon Musk: about 70% distrusted\n- Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai: about 75% distrusted\n- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: about 75% distrusted\n- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: about 75% distrusted\n- Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel (and former CEO of PayPal): about 79% distrusted\n- Palantir CEO Alex Karp: about 81% distrusted\n\nAnd while we’re on the subject, 45% of respondents think AI’s impact on their careers will be negative, while only 10% believe its impact will be positive.\n\nThere are more shocking findings from the Generation Lab’s survey. Nearly 80% expressed negative sentiment about the U.S. economy. 50% said that in the future, the economy “will get worse,” while 22% thought it “will get better.” Meanwhile, 46% hold a “favorable” or a “very favorable” view of democratic socialism, as opposed to 23% who have a “somewhat unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” view.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study", "canonical_source": "https://gizmodo.com/tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study-2000799150", "published_at": "2026-08-17 09:00:03+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-17 09:10:50.436695+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["CNBC", "Generation Lab", "Satya Nadella", "Mark Zuckerberg", "Jensen Huang", "Elon Musk", "Sundar Pichai", "Dario Amodei"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-ceos-overwhelmingly-distrusted-by-young-study.jsonld"}}