Once Adored, Now Reviled: The Tech Leaders Young People Distrust Most

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Amid the rapid development of AI, many young people do not trust the bosses of companies developing the technology. A majority stated they do not trust these leaders to act responsibly regarding AI.

This was revealed in a survey conducted by CNBC Generation Labs. The poll received responses from 1,088 people aged 18-34.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, received the best score with 65% distrusting him and 35% holding the opposite view. Meanwhile, Palantir CEO Alex Karp received the worst score, with 81% of respondents saying they did not trust him.

Meanwhile, 75% of respondents said they did not trust Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet. A nearly similar score was also obtained by Dario Amodei, leader of the rising company Anthropic.

Peter Thiel, who leads Palantir, was distrusted by 79% of people. Around 70% of people said they did not trust well-known names such as Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta), Jensen Huang (CEO of Nvidia) and Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX).

In the same report, the young people were also asked about AI development. Not many of them believed AI could help them.

As many as 45% of respondents said AI would have a negative impact on their careers. Meanwhile, 10% believed AI could help their careers, as cited from CNBC International, Wednesday (19/8/2026).

AI regulation was also deemed necessary. Some of them (40%) also said there needed to be federal government rules governing AI.

An expert body was also deemed necessary by 36% of respondents to implement AI rules. Only a few respondents said AI did not need to be regulated (8%).

Meanwhile, data centres were also included in the report. Most respondents (60%) said data centre construction needed to be slowed down, and only 15% supported acceleration.

Perceptions of technology company bosses have changed drastically. In the early days of the internet, technology companies with various innovations and flexible working methods had a good reputation.

Tech bosses such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, or Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were inspirations and even idols for young people.