Voices: In Utah, concerns about AI are rooted in experience

When Utahns talk about artificial intelligence, I don’t hear fear. I hear calculations.

I’ve been a computer engineer since the early 1980s — long enough to remember when “automation” meant new machines, not a new management strategy. Long enough to have lived through more layoffs than I can comfortably count and long enough to notice patterns that don’t show up in glossy presentations.

One of those patterns is simple: When companies find a way to do more with fewer people, the “fewer people” part tends to arrive first.

That experience colors how I hear today’s conversations about artificial intelligence. Nationally, the debate often sounds abstract — philosophical, even. Are people afraid of AI? Are they overreacting? Is this just another case of society struggling to adjust to new tools?

Those questions land differently in Utah.

Here, losing a job isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a turning point.

Utah prides itself on self-reliance, and there’s much to admire in that. But self-reliance becomes something else when the systems meant to catch people during transitions are thin, conditional or difficult to navigate. Our unemployment benefits are limited in duration, amount and accessibility.

Health care adds another layer of uncertainty. Even after Medicaid expansion, coverage can hinge on income thresholds that fluctuate wildly after a layoff. In practice, people who qualify on paper are often denied for administrative reasons.

Housing, of course, waits for no one. A missed paycheck or two can unravel stability quickly, especially along the Wasatch Front, where the cost of housing has marched steadily upward.

Stack those realities together and the question, “Is AI a threat?” stops being philosophical. It becomes practical.

Utahns are not imagining some distant science-fiction future. They’re running a familiar mental simulation: If this speeds up layoffs, and if my employer decides efficiency matters more than loyalty, what happens to me next?

That’s not panic. That’s map reading.

In countries with stronger social safety nets, AI may still be disruptive, but the downside is buffered. Losing a job doesn’t automatically mean losing health care or a home. Career transitions are painful, but they’re rarely existential.

In Utah, the same technological change carries sharper edges.

This helps explain why national coverage sometimes feels out of sync with local experience. When commentators describe AI skepticism as emotional, cultural or inherited from past tech disappointments, they aren’t wrong — they’re just standing somewhere else on the terrain.

From a position of financial security, waiting to see how things unfold is reasonable. From a position of financial insecurity, waiting is exposure.

Many Utah workers don’t distrust technology itself. We work in tech. We build systems. We understand tools. What we distrust is how technology is used by institutions that have already shown, repeatedly, that workers are interchangeable once the spreadsheet says so.

That lesson doesn’t come from ideology. It comes from experience.

Over the course of my career, I’ve watched companies talk about efficiency, agility and innovation while quietly preparing plans to reduce human headcount. AI doesn’t introduce that logic. It accelerates it.

None of this means AI should be rejected. But it does mean the conversation needs to be grounded where people live.

If we want a more honest discussion about AI in Utah, we should stop asking why people feel uneasy and start asking a simpler question: What happens to someone here if this goes wrong?

Until that question has a credible answer, skepticism isn’t fear of progress. It’s recognition of risk.

In Utah, self-reliance has always meant knowing where the risks are — and refusing to pretend they don’t exist.

Mike Walterman is a retired computer engineer with more than four decades of experience in the technology industry. He previously worked at Evans & Sutherland and has lived and worked in Utah for many years.

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