Over the past years, tech skepticism became a marker of being informed and progressive. When beliefs signal group membership, they can trump even direct experience.
For something like climate change, It's partly partisan signaling, but I think people also have high ambient anxiety that they need to attach to something. On the left, it could be climate or inequality. On the right, it might be immigration or social decline. Are people just more neurotic than they used to be? It seems like in the past and in developing countries, people have more concrete problems that they need to focus on, and they don't have the mental space and energy to worry about such diffuse issues.
It's interesting to wonder why opposition to technology became a left-leaning signal in the first place. Maybe it ties back to environmentalism since the 70's, but it seems like it's experienced a resurgence in the last 10 years. I'm not sure why.
Thanks Greg. I also notice that it happened more in the last ten years.
On neuroticism, I do think there were some historical parallels in early 1900s America, like how Irish Americans or Japanese Americans were scapegoats. But I wonder if polarization and identity type of politics, which at least in America, only started in the last couple decades, might make this much worse?
To the extent that it has become worse, it's possible that social media has become a conduit for people's latent neuroticism to become exacerbated in ways that it couldn't have become even 20 years ago.
I do wonder whether the left's hostility to new technology happened before or after the rightward shift of the tech sector in the US. Whichever one came first probably had a causal effect on the second. At least, that's the best explanation I can think of for why anti-technocracy vibes became left-wing very recently.
Good point. This is something I'd like to look into! Especially the left's hostility to new tech + the rightware shift to the leaders of the tech sector.
There's definitely the ingroup signaling aspect you describe, plus overlap with longrunning leftist skepticism of big business of any kind, and sensitivity to "exploitation," etc. And I agree that some of these narratives (ex: environmental harms or antitrust) are reflexive and tribal and barking up the wrong tree. I use AI regularly and think it's impressive and exciting in many ways.
I also agree with a few others here that there's something more to it than that. One big distinction compared to other countries is that in the US, the emergence of big tech has coincided with a period of political dysfunction and national decline (ex: relative to China). The internet era began at the peak of American power and self esteem, and since then, a lot of depressing trends have intertwined with plausibly tech-related explanations.
Phone addiction fried our attention spans and made it harder to live in the moment. A fragmented media made it harder to tell what is true and probably increased polarization. There's been a rise in anxiety and mental health issues. The digital economy reduced face to face interactions; digital entertainment reduced in-person hangouts. That accelerated the breakdown of community described in Bowling Alone, and increased rates of loneliness and being single. There's been a concentration of economic opportunity on the coasts and in white collar sectors using tech; globalization hollowing out the heartland and leading to deaths of despair, etc.
How much of these trends is actually attributable to tech is debatable, but the impression is enough to embed the skepticism. A lot of Americans would probably rather live in 1995, and see AI as an acceleration of trends that are changing too much too fast. Whereas that's less so in many other countries.
I totally agree - these declines happened around the same time. And they’re hard to disentangle and it creates a strong impression. :) This is a great point!!
Interesting! I agree this is a puzzle, and the dynamics you point out are real, but I’m not sure that’s the whole story. My guess is that a lot of lower-income Americans and non-Democrats are also worried about AI.
Checking now, the first two data points I can find are:
1) this Pew survey finds that more educated Americans are more excited about the use of AI for science.
2) this Quinnipac survey finds that rich households (>$200k) have a ~2:1 ratio of thinking AI will do more good than harm, while the ratio for poor households is the opposite (<$50k). https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3923
One reason for the delta to the rest of the world might be about risk aversion - - I have some sense that Americans are generally skeptical of change, much more so than people from poorer countries that have seen a lot of economic growth. And indeed, the countries with the highest worry minus excitement in that chart are especially rich+stagnant ones. If people have diminishing marginal utility in dollars, poorer people should on average be happy taking more risks.
This sits a bit poorly with the within-country data from the US of course. One way to square the circle — people from poorer but more dynamic countries have more experience of progress making their lives better and little experience of being economically boxed out from productive work, while many in the US have had their jobs outsourced.
Another hypothesis is that Americans are more paranoid or skeptical about new centers of power arising in society.
For something like climate change, It's partly partisan signaling, but I think people also have high ambient anxiety that they need to attach to something. On the left, it could be climate or inequality. On the right, it might be immigration or social decline. Are people just more neurotic than they used to be? It seems like in the past and in developing countries, people have more concrete problems that they need to focus on, and they don't have the mental space and energy to worry about such diffuse issues.
It's interesting to wonder why opposition to technology became a left-leaning signal in the first place. Maybe it ties back to environmentalism since the 70's, but it seems like it's experienced a resurgence in the last 10 years. I'm not sure why.
Thanks Greg. I also notice that it happened more in the last ten years.
On neuroticism, I do think there were some historical parallels in early 1900s America, like how Irish Americans or Japanese Americans were scapegoats. But I wonder if polarization and identity type of politics, which at least in America, only started in the last couple decades, might make this much worse?
To the extent that it has become worse, it's possible that social media has become a conduit for people's latent neuroticism to become exacerbated in ways that it couldn't have become even 20 years ago.
I do wonder whether the left's hostility to new technology happened before or after the rightward shift of the tech sector in the US. Whichever one came first probably had a causal effect on the second. At least, that's the best explanation I can think of for why anti-technocracy vibes became left-wing very recently.
Good point. This is something I'd like to look into! Especially the left's hostility to new tech + the rightware shift to the leaders of the tech sector.
There's definitely the ingroup signaling aspect you describe, plus overlap with longrunning leftist skepticism of big business of any kind, and sensitivity to "exploitation," etc. And I agree that some of these narratives (ex: environmental harms or antitrust) are reflexive and tribal and barking up the wrong tree. I use AI regularly and think it's impressive and exciting in many ways.
I also agree with a few others here that there's something more to it than that. One big distinction compared to other countries is that in the US, the emergence of big tech has coincided with a period of political dysfunction and national decline (ex: relative to China). The internet era began at the peak of American power and self esteem, and since then, a lot of depressing trends have intertwined with plausibly tech-related explanations.
Phone addiction fried our attention spans and made it harder to live in the moment. A fragmented media made it harder to tell what is true and probably increased polarization. There's been a rise in anxiety and mental health issues. The digital economy reduced face to face interactions; digital entertainment reduced in-person hangouts. That accelerated the breakdown of community described in Bowling Alone, and increased rates of loneliness and being single. There's been a concentration of economic opportunity on the coasts and in white collar sectors using tech; globalization hollowing out the heartland and leading to deaths of despair, etc.
How much of these trends is actually attributable to tech is debatable, but the impression is enough to embed the skepticism. A lot of Americans would probably rather live in 1995, and see AI as an acceleration of trends that are changing too much too fast. Whereas that's less so in many other countries.
I totally agree - these declines happened around the same time. And they’re hard to disentangle and it creates a strong impression. :) This is a great point!!
Very interesting! It brings language to something I’ve observed also, but didn’t know how to explain. Thank you :)
Thanks so much Madison!
Interesting! I agree this is a puzzle, and the dynamics you point out are real, but I’m not sure that’s the whole story. My guess is that a lot of lower-income Americans and non-Democrats are also worried about AI.
Checking now, the first two data points I can find are:
1) this Pew survey finds that more educated Americans are more excited about the use of AI for science.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/views-of-ais-impact-on-society-and-human-abilities/
2) this Quinnipac survey finds that rich households (>$200k) have a ~2:1 ratio of thinking AI will do more good than harm, while the ratio for poor households is the opposite (<$50k). https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3923
One reason for the delta to the rest of the world might be about risk aversion - - I have some sense that Americans are generally skeptical of change, much more so than people from poorer countries that have seen a lot of economic growth. And indeed, the countries with the highest worry minus excitement in that chart are especially rich+stagnant ones. If people have diminishing marginal utility in dollars, poorer people should on average be happy taking more risks.
This sits a bit poorly with the within-country data from the US of course. One way to square the circle — people from poorer but more dynamic countries have more experience of progress making their lives better and little experience of being economically boxed out from productive work, while many in the US have had their jobs outsourced.
Another hypothesis is that Americans are more paranoid or skeptical about new centers of power arising in society.