The AI backlash is fast becoming the 21st-century version of the temperance movement: massive, bipartisan, hugely powerful. Here's what I said last year in my final BBC Reith Lecture, before the AI revolt went mainstream: –– In my previous lectures, I spoke about two moral revolutions of the nineteenth century: the fight against slavery, and the struggle for women’s rights. But I didn’t mention the third one yet: temperance. Many abolitionists and suffragettes were also temperance activists. This movement is largely forgotten nowadays, but it holds important lessons for us. Back then alcohol was an even bigger social catastrophe than it is now. There were no warning labels, no age restrictions, no limits on advertising. Saloons dotted every street corner, wages disappeared into the bottle, and families were torn apart by violence and neglect. The alcohol industry profited from human weakness while devastating entire communities. That is why people rose against it. The temperance movement was one of the largest democratic movements in history, led by women and workers. They believed that real freedom meant being fully present. They saw addiction for what it is: the moment when the power of choice no longer exists. And so they demanded radical measures: higher taxes, stricter licensing, and even total prohibition. Today we face a new addiction industry. Not of wine and whiskey, but of apps and algorithms. Many of Stanford’s brightest minds are building a single great Moloch, an attention-hijacking machine that steals our time and leaves us emptier by the hour. AI threatens to supercharge it all. But here’s my warning to Silicon Valley: You’re awakening a dragon. Public anger is stirring. And it could grow into a movement as fierce and unstoppable as the temperance crusade a century ago. Poll after poll finds that people across the West think AI will worsen almost everything they care about, from our health and relationships to our jobs and democracies. By a three-to-one margin, people want more regulation. History shows how this movement could be ignited by a small group of citizens and how powerful it could become. Just as Bertrand Russell led mass protests against the nuclear arms race, we may soon see mass resistance to the AI arms race. A century ago temperance activists even managed to push a constitutional amendment through Congress to ban alcohol altogether. Those who want to avoid provoking something equally drastic should learn from the past.