Having grown up four blocks from her new place, she would be moving to her first apartment after college, returning to San Francisco for the first time as an adult. She was excited to live in a neighborhood she called the epitome of "Old San Francisco," with its diners and gritty bars she remembered from her childhood. But when she got there, she found that something in the neighborhood's spirit had changed.

"All of it was gone. Everyone works from home, and there's no sense of community," Dwyer said. A new wave of artificial intelligence-fueled, tech-related gentrification was seeping into the few spots of San Francisco left untouched, and for Dwyer, "It made it hard to connect to the city again."

Although the world may be watching San Francisco as the leading voice in the AI conversation, a lot of our young people, perhaps surprisingly, hate it. In a city with a long history of attracting young people for its rich artistic and progressive history, some say artificial intelligence represents everything the city stands against.

?On Wednesday evenings at Kiitos Cocktail Lounge and Sports Bar on Capp Street, a small group of people meet for drinks. You spot them immediately, dramatically ranging in age, ethnicity and other demographics and dressed in matching bright red T-shirts with bold white lettering: STOP AI.

The grassroots activist organization formed in 2024 in Oakland but now meets all across the Bay Area. Stop AI attendees span generations, all inspired by witnessing the negative consequences of AI in their day-to-day lives.

A former software engineer whose job was replaced by AI is now "taunted" with billboards for AI startups that say they will "stop hiring humans." An art teacher in his 70s is worried about the future of visual art when everything can be replicated. And Valielza Huynh-O'Keefe, a 27-year-old County Council member of the San Francisco Green Party, wants to prevent AI from seeping more into her life than it already has.

"I think for Gen Z, I think that feeling of nihilism is strong, I think the assumption that we like AI is generally misplaced. Gen Z wants to do something about it, but I think there is just a lack of political direction," Huynh-O'Keefe says.

A recent poll by Gallup backs this up. While about half of the Gen Zers polled reported using AI daily or weekly, skepticism and backlash are climbing. Young adults entering the workforce were concerned about job replacement, and close to half surveyed said the risks of adopting AI in the workplace outweighed its benefits. Only 15% said they saw AI as a net benefit.

Huynh-O'Keefe, originally from Las Vegas, moved to San Francisco in 2024 with her partner, who had gotten into medical school at UCSF. She immediately fell in love with the city, especially its public transit system, but noticed that with the advent of AI, the city became "less welcoming." She lives in an apartment complex in Mission Bay, right across the street from the Open AI headquarters. When she saw Stop AI protesting outside, she felt inspired to get involved, especially as the group wasn't tied to a particular political party.