> the uniquely American animosity toward artificial intelligence

The poll they cite shows this is clearly not unique: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/concern-and-ex.... The US is (just barely) at the top, but no country is anywhere close to "more excited than concerned", and several countries are basically equal to the US.

I live in America so that's my perspective, but I would be surprised if this article couldn't accurately describe a lot of other countries.

Hello citizen,

We're going to build a massive data center in your town. In one day, it will use as much electricity as you use in 10 years, and will produce more written words than you could write in 10 lifetimes. Its main purpose will be to eliminate your job, but it will have other uses, like generating images of your daughter in a bikini.

We do this in the hopes that it makes me (not you) very rich. Sounds good? Just kidding, we're not asking you!

Everyone - not just America - hates AI, because it has now become clear that the tool isn't a way to empower the masses (as it was initially sold) but instead to move power and wealth up the ladder. Automated (shit) customer support. AI interviewing. Brainrot content creation. Deepfakes. Parasocial relationships. Dangerous medical advice/therapy. Propaganda. Surveillance.

AI is simply not making anyone's life better, so what's there to love exactly?

The poll they're referring to is here: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/concern-and-ex...

The bucket they're referring to is labeled "more concerned than excited." It seems like rounding that to "hate" (in the headline) is misleading?

People can be "more concerned than excited" about the future while still using ChatGPT (or Claude Code) a lot. Even much of the management and workers at top AI labs could be put in the "more concerned than excited" bucket.

Maybe the headline should be "Why are Americans more concerned than excited about AI?"

My speculations:

- Potential job loss, particularly in the bottom half or so of jobs.

- Further wealth inequality due to so many factors but primarily because the companies providing these tools will capture the dollars that would’ve been spent on the jobs mentioned above.

- NIMBY-ism. AI = data centers and people are overwhelmingly deciding they don’t want these near their homes. I live in the Midwest and it’s been amazing how much opposition has been showing up for these projects.

Of course all of these are based on the speculation and “promises” of the tech. Many feel the time is to act now rather than once it’s too late, on the off chance these things do happen.

https://archive.ph/ooir9

The problem is that it's being used for things it shouldn't be used for. Everyone these days knows that you shouldn't use a microwave to cook a steak, but I'm sure when it was first invented there were many chefs who tried.

More pertinent question --- why do non-Americans love AI?

Lawyers use it to draft legal briefs.

Court sanctions lawyers for fake citations generated by AI.

https://natlawreview.com/article/court-sanctions-attorneys-s...

AI is inherently unreliable and untrustworthy. In this case, distrust is not just some emotional reaction but pretty well grounded in fact.

Once lawyers learn this themselves from experience, I expect they will move toward legally impressing this upon any who are slow/reluctant to admit as much.

Using technology that is widely known to be flawed for any sort of serious work is a textbook example of "negligence".

Good. They should be skeptical.

> People in many other developed democracies — Japan, Israel, Sweden, South Korea — had warm views of social media in a 2022 survey

I guess they cite that as some kind of jab at Americans ("look how crazy and backwards they are"), but, I am sorry, I don't see warms views of ad fueled tech megacorps sucking people's attention and harvesting clicks as a positive thing. If anything, someone else could turn right around and reword the article "as look at these other countries blindly trusting American tech corps with their privacy and attention".

To put it very simply, I and other Americans I discuss this with have absolutely zero faith that all of the promises being made around AI will lead to a better life. For one, if AI stands to threaten our jobs, these jobs are critical to our very survival in this country that has done everything within its power to remove safety nets and programs that benefit those experiencing hard times. The state of the American system is so poor when it comes to supporting anyone who is not wealthy, that it is fully expected that we would be placed into a category of "Undesirables" where more effort will be placed into purging or removing us than helping us get back on our feet.

Additionally, Americans are very technologically astitute in comparison to other countries, we were first adopters for AI. I think at this point its been proven that AI is underperforming all expectations, and thus we are starting to resent the sentitment that more and more of our economy needs to be directed towards this technology that still remains a pipedream rather than a reality.

60% of the time, A.I. works every time

The author worked for "an A.I. startup"

His journalism has been solely focused on covering the so-called "tech" industry

Perhaps he "likes" A.I.

Who cares

Here, "hate" or "like" are responses to the behavior of companies, and repercussions from those actions, not use of computers or statistics per se

I hired a local plumber to do some work on a bathroom remodel. They had a human secretary when I first reached out and they sent a plumber to give me a quote, everything was going smoothly.

After I get the quote, I call back and get a phone AI assistant instead to handle scheduling the job instead of the human secretary. The AI assistant does not understand my home address and keeps asking me over and over to repeat it, it was the most Black Mirror experience I've had in years. There was no option to speak to a person, so I hung up without getting the job scheduled. I wrote a bad Google review detailing my experience.

I called a different plumbing company (with a human on the other end) and got a second quote that was 30% less than the original, they came out and did the job.

Three weeks later, the owner of the first company reaches out making excuses as to why he wasn't flagged about my issue sooner and apologizing, but the job was done by that point.

I'd rather pay extra for services like plumbing if it means I can talk to a human because these LLM voice systems can't do basic scheduling calls. If they go off the rails, the customer is totally hosed. I don't wanna hear "oh it'll get better". The future we're headed towards is banal and dystopian beyond comprehension.

As an experienced software engineer, I’m incredibly excited about what AI is going to be able to do, like on a scale of 1-10, I’m an 8.

As a citizen, who doesn’t trust the government, or the media, or giant corporations, I’m also an 8/10 concerned.

That means I’m equally concerned about AI as I am excited, I might be more concerned than someone who isn’t excited at all about AI 1/10, but who is mildly concerned with a 5/10.

Because it's forced down our throat, non-functional, and expensive. Do we really need a whole article for that?

People imagine there's an AI investment bubble, and the inevitable bursting will have financial consequences. Many will suffer (but we'll recover).

People also fear being erased from the labor market, as Prompt Engineers sharpen their AI pencils and draw guidelines that eliminate jobs.

There's also a knowing fear of misguided AI, newly hired into what was once a human's job, applying seriously stupid criteria to reject applicants for credit, housing, employment, benefits, etc. (This AI is already deployed. Here, there's another bubble, as many companies attempt competitive advantage by becoming early adopters.)

My personal main AI anxiety concerns the ongoing competitive build-out and the unknown ripple effect which the demand for more resources will incur.

The race to construct bigger better data centers is intense and expensive. I fear the recklessness of the magnificent seven, as they attempt to blaze a trail across the country, recommissioning rickety infrastructure and (I speculate) cutting corners, putting the entire national grid at risk of cascading failures.

I could live with all the other failure modes, but I really don't want to have to live without electricity.

One hypothesis might be the crony administrations embrace of AI with no apparent checks on their behavior.

Zuck can get an audience with the President, who can basically override any so-called independent agencies determinations. Congress is neutered and SCOTUS seems to enable this behavior. All while our power bills go up and we fuel data centers by polluting our environment

So I wonder if it’s not just AI, it’s AI with seemingly no recourse from the public to check capitalist excesses.

I just want to say that the AI companies themselves use extremely hyperbolic, apocalyptic language. What else do we expect?

For me it's oversaturation. AI "features" are getting pushed into every product whether I want them or not. I've found AI useful in some contexts, but having it forced in everywhere screams desperation. Do people actually want this stuff or are companies just hoping they do?

The only Americans ive seen excited about AI are CEOs which should come as a shocker to nobody.

I think people see through it as a way for corporations to cut spending and jobs while offering a lower quality product.

My apartment complex recently switched to an "AI assistant" that replaced the front office person. I haven't heard a single positive thing about it from anybody. It's utterly terrible, and they're absolutely not "passing the savings on" to residents by lowering rents.

Even with "vibe coding", we accept that it does a shit job, because it does an "okay enough" shit job that it's often usable, but nobody wants to maintain "vibe code".

A few years ago in my lefty friend circles, everyone was talking about grabber’s “bullshit jobs” and how we’ve built a system to keep us occupied with meaningless busy work.

But now AI is threatening (promising?) to make those jobs go away, and the same folks are pissed.

If you wanted people to get on board with this, there should probably some sort of UBI/expansive social safety net in place because it turns out that if people have to choose between unfulfilling drudgery and not affording food… people take the drudgery

b/c they have tried it and watched others use it and sense that it is not very "intelligent"?

"Why do Americans dislike what billionaires like?"

The whiny petulant owner class punches down on the commoners again. To those so privileged: I prefer my privacy and sanity to that of your goofy futuristic fever dreams. Please knock it off. If you want me to build a statue in your honor then fix healthcare.

Because it's a marginal improvement and though useful it's being sold by degenerate tech grifters as the science fiction dream come true to increase their influence and wealth. Everyone is sick and tired of these overgrown teenagers running amok.

The current AI bubble seems like a bad proposition for most people regardless of how it shakes out. The way I've seen it described elsewhere is: either the bubble pops, causing a significant recession or it doesn't and loads of people lose their livelihoods to AI. In either case average people lose.

The problems with AI aren't technical they are political and economical. This topic is discussed in Max Tegmark's "Life 3.0", in which he theorises about various outcomes if we do invent AGI. He describes one possibility where we move to a post-scarcity society and people spends their days doing art and whatever else they fancy. Another option looks more like the world described in Elysium. I suspect the latter prediction feels more likely to most people.

People hate AI instead of humans - themselves (job), others (customer support). People love AI instead of nothing - coding help, medical questions when not at doctor's office, companionship when quality human interaction is scarce. You can get any answer you want depending on how you phrase your question.

I feel like it's because the people pushing it have a terrible track record. They've shown themselves to be manipulative, untrustworthy, and willing to do whatever it takes to make themselves rich. Why should we trust them with AI?

In better hands the technology would probably make the world a better place. But not in the hands of silicon valley billionaires.

I'm not American but I guess they don't want it because it's shit.

Uhh AI bros are promising Wall Street they're going to eliminate wages while telling us we're on the precipice of a workless utopia (while also being in bed with the far right who want to destroy anything resembling a social safety net.) That's not even taking into account the Theil/Yarvin/Musk/Trump/etc techno-fuedalist aspirations ("Freedom" cities)

I love the tech, and despise the people pushing it and how they want to use it. What should be used to free us from some work and allow us to focus more on human things (family, arts) and science, instead will be used to further divide and subjugate us, all in the interest of shifting more wealth and power from the working class up to those who have both in abundance.

Because the entire press spent all year telling the public to hate it, and neither the writers nor the readers know much about it.

U.S. is most media saturated realm in the world. Americans minds have been saturated by artificial information for 50 years and since mid-2000 FAANG the American psyche is cracking apart with the strain. In 2025 AI is amplifying the psychic chaos and creating an economic existential disaster while accelerating the most tragic and corrosive aspects of monetary wealth. But others than this, what's to hate?

It’s the opposite of our values of hard work, education, meritocracy and honesty. People associate AI with scammers, incompetence, offshoring and h1b abusers/exploiters like musk. Meanwhile, the people that seem to really love AI are Indian scammers, foreign cybercriminals and others with get rich quick greed is good, education is for suckers mindsets. Unfortunately the greedy cretins are ascendant while the American values of prior decades are being rapidly replaced.

A much better question is why anyone likes AI or see any value in it