Agreed about populism. Populism is “us the pure majority against the corrupt elites”, which can apply to all sorts of ideologies.
There’s right wing populism (e.g. “us the poor working class against the corrupt East coast elites”) and left wing populism (e.g. “us the poor majority against the corrupt corporate giants”, think the Occupy movement). There’s also populism in Latin America that’s more focused on fighting political clientelism, etc.
I think you could easily change the article to say “MAGA” instead of “populism” and get the same point across, though it’s not that big of a deal.
I think that when robotics becomes sufficiently anthropomorphic the AI backlash will really come into full swing.
Imagine Sydney Bing threatening users but it’s a robot in your house.
The visceral reaction is going to be way stronger than all the papers we could publish.