In the face of massive public resistance and anger, tech bros need to start thinking like Andrew Carnegie and the “robber barons” of the Gilded Age — or even like Xi Jinping.

The tech world is in bad odor these days.

Social media’s addictive qualities have parents in such an uproar that Meta just agreed to pay out an $18 billion settlement, and data-center projects are facing rejection across the country. 

Yet for decades America’s tech industry was cherished as a center of innovation, a world in which hard-working entrepreneurs started businesses in garages and produced things that made everyone’s lives better.

Because it was constantly innovating, it stayed ahead of government’s ability to regulate it, resulting in “permissionless innovation” — change that didn’t have to ask first.

And that seemed fine, as it brought us personal computers, spreadsheets, word processing, databases, laptops, cell phones, smartphones and social media.

Silicon Valley was making us richer and more capable, and if it made a lot of money in the process, that seemed only fair.

Until suddenly, not quite a decade ago, Silicon Valley’s “regulatory exceptionalism” came to an end.

Not because we resented the gobs of money Silicon Valley’s tech lords were making, but because we began to doubt whether they were still working to make ordinary people richer and more capable.

They were no longer seen as the hammer-wielding woman in that famous “1984” Apple commercial, but as the Big Brother figure up on the screen in that famous “1984” Apple commercial.

At the heart of the widespread bipartisan resistance to data centers and Flock cameras is our distrust of the people behind them. 

As recently as last year, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were publicly fretting that artificial intelligence could cause massive job loss and even human extinction: “There’s a 25% chance that things go really, really badly,” as Amodei put it.

Today, on the verge of OpenAI’s trillion-dollar IPO, both have changed their tune.

Steve Jobs and his generation gave us tech that empowered individuals; our current tech lords produce tech that spies on us and engage in creepy talk about AI’s disastrous potential — at least until it looks like saying so might queer the deal.

So there’s room for suspicion here.  

True, data centers are relatively benign, and the objections to them are mostly bogus (they use less water than America’s golf courses, and they aren’t being dumped on the poor; Loudoun County, Va., the richest county in America, has the highest concentration of data centers in the world). 

Flock cameras are less trustworthy: After experiencing extensive government surveillance to enforce draconian COVID policies, Americans have reason to feel skittish about accepting even more of it.

But I think most of the problem here is that people actively distrust the tech bros themselves.

So if the industry wants to get back in America’s good graces, it needs to learn from the moguls of the past.

The “robber barons” of 150 years ago who built huge companies in industries like oil, steel, railroads and banking were phenomenally rich for their era. 

With their wealth they made sure to build things for ordinary people — institutions and edifices that benefited regular Americans in their own communities.

Andrew Carnegie built 2,509 public libraries, about half of which are still in service today, including dozens of branches in New York City. 

He also built and endowed arts centers like Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., and more.

Cornelius Vanderbilt endowed Vanderbilt University and numerous hospitals and schools.

John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University, funded hookworm eradication projects and gave land to create state and national parks.

Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck & Co. collaborated with Booker T. Washington to establish nearly 5,000 schools for black children in the segregated South. 

All this physical and intellectual infrastructure made people’s lives better where they lived — and today’s tech lords, with their enormous wealth, have a chance to do the same.

“Dear Big Tech, build the community a new school and a new football stadium,” Jesse Kelly advised this week. “You’ll get your data center. You’re welcome.”

Beijing figured it out: China is gobbling up Africa’s resources after funding hospitals, soccer stadiums, airports and roads. 

(In contrast, African officials say, when you talk to US envoys you get lectures about climate change or diversity.)

The tech world needs to go back to finding ways to improve our lives, either through its products or through its philanthropy. 

My advice to the tech bros: Make Andrew Carnegie smile.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.