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It’s really stunning how the USA has so swiftly shifted from being one of the most techno-optimistic and tech-industry-loving countries on earth, to a country where most people seem to assume - not incorrectly, at least in many cases - that tech is out to get them.

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com

Why is the U.S. public so much more negative on AI than almost anyone else? Well, I think the fact that the U.S. AI industry is being lead by a bunch of very visible, crazy weirdos who talk about how AI will take everyone’s job and maybe kill us all the time is a pretty key factor.

Being really enthusiastic about new technology and our scientific and technology industries was the USA’s brand for what, the entire 20th century? And seems like over the course of about 20 years, big tech and our abject failure to meaningfully regulate it has pretty successfully lit that on fire.

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Yup. There's one big, big exception that we can all agree on, but other than that it's bleak.

Bouba's Delivery Service@fernmonkey.bsky.social

A fun game is to ask someone to name anything good that's been invented in the past 20 years, and just as they're about to answer, you say "I'll spot you medicine, can you think of one that's NOT medical?"

Video games have come a lot way since then. Cheap big screen TVs. Apple TV letting us stream video instead of having to deal with a DVD collection. Streaming audio. There have been a few. But you're just off in your time frame. Say 10 years and it's a lot harder.

Streaming is good. Too bad it turned into yet another instance of You Don't Own Things Any More™

Not sure that's true. I'd say the heyday of the US space program was the moment techo optimism peaked as a dominant current of American culture, but before and after that period we had the spectre of nuclear war, many strains of dystopian fiction, the rise of conspiratorial paranoia, climate denial,

the massive resurgence of new age spiritually, the satanic panic, gen-x ennui, creationism and a myriad other trends that really temper the view of the US as a generally forward looking, tech enthusiast society. Sure, there was always a very powerful tech scene, and it made a lot of money,

I’m sure some people in academia have actually studied the remarkable US shift from optimism about tech to intense pessimism, and I’d love to read that research if anyone has links.

Of course, while I share the public’s skepticism about surveillance, social media, and AI, I also am forced to admit that this techno-skepticism and distrust must also be linked to the antivaxxer movement and its distrust of vaccines (which I think is horrible, stupid, and dangerous)

Google’s pivot from “don’t be evil” to “be evil,” Zuckerberg’s entire deal, etc

Seems like the shift happened after 2015. I wonder what happened in 2016, what big tech's role was revealed in that, and what masks in big tech started coming off after 2016?

Big data analysis tools went mainstream and data scientist jobs proliferated in that era when the decline began. It is when the users of products and services became the products. Big tech monetized their users. Also data breaches hit the public consciousness--e.g., OPM hack in 2015.

I think there's just a pile-on effect of how the panglossian tech types have gone through several cycles of "hyping the next big thing, which turns out to be nothing anybody wants" so the average person has caught wise. Like we all saw all the crypto ads during that one Superbowl.

used to look forward to some cool new innovative thing just around the corner. now it’s wondering how they’re going to try to squeeze me more.

Those Pew polls seem like damn good circumstantial evidence that the public is paying remarkably close attention. In 2015 Google’s motto was "Don't be evil". By 2018 that motto was gone. Like damn, they just came right out and said it and people noticed.

I think that it's largely that we haven't had anything new and fun since the 3rd or 4th iPhone. I think we'd be much more in on AI if all of the easy automation wins we had around 2000 were just happening now, like if Claude were making air travel easier.

build — the “easy win” is not just saving clicks; it is giving someone time back without quietly making the decision harder to inspect. Air travel feels magical when the automation handles routine friction while the passenger keeps visibility, consent, and a way out when the system is wrong.

Instead we’ve had planned obsolescence, SaaS, private equity, and constant surveillance. Perhaps it’s that last that affects Americans uniquely. Other countries have had a surveillance state we reflexively resist for decades, where we’re only just realizing we’ve lost the public square entirely.

Yeah it feels like it's kinda been brewing and building for a while and the brazen idiocy of the AI guys has finally broken the dam. And even though I think some things about it are fascinating and cool and groundbreaking, the people running the frontier labs are visibly insane

Find yourself some data when you conflate my well earned mistrust of the scumbags running Silicon Valleyand my lifelong embrace of medical science, please.

The current Silicon Valley brand of tech is not the thing from the 20th century. The Saturn V, the 747, medical tech, mass automobiles, house appliances... all of that vs Facebook, Palantir and ChatGPT? No wonder people loved the former and hate the latter