Why Americans are so worried about AI

Aria Finger (0:00)

America is helping to build this technology, and yet Americans are among the most worried about it.

Reid Hoffman (0:05)

So I actually think AI inclusion in the hiring process will broadly be much better. You want to return to manufacturing strength in the US, AI and robotics is your only hope.

Aria Finger (0:16)

What do you think changes when the advertising platform is also this assistant that you're supposed to trust and use to make really important decisions in your life? Reid, so thrilled to be chatting with you today as always.

Reid Hoffman (0:28)

And likewise?

Aria Finger (0:30)

So let's get right into it. AI optimism, do people like it? Do they not? We saw that last month, Gallup and Microsoft released findings from a survey of adults in 37 countries and this was about their awareness, use, and views of AI.

One of their major findings was among people aware of AI, positive feelings outweighed negative ones in 34 of those countries. That was a big surprise to me, but was not a surprise was that the US is an exception.

Seventy-four percent of AI aware Americans feel worried, and only 36 percent expect AI to mostly help their country. And that's compared to 93 percent of people in China who think AI is mostly going to help them. And so across countries, the median share who had never used AI is also 57 percent. So Reid, America is helping to build this technology, and yet Americans are among the most worried about it. What do you think explains this gap? We're the ones who build it. We have high adoption, and yet we are not excited about it.

Reid Hoffman (1:34)

I think there's three things.

One, I think there's a general, call it concern, fear, worry, that the future is going to be less good than the now, and that AI is just an amplification of that. I think even before AI, there was that worry, partially because I think that we've done a not great job as a country of bringing, call it, the majority of the country along on our economic prosperity and how to make sure that that, maybe the simplest way of putting it is make sure we get the middle class arrays in the work and jobs and opportunities they're doing. I think the second thing is that generally speaking, when you have technological waves, the people who already in their own minds feel like challengers versus incumbents are benefited from that. So it's kind of not surprising that when you go to China, which is viewing its growing, its economics and feels that it's kind of coming on strong to create a whole number of industries, some of which already very successfully.

But even for example, when you get to the Global South, the primary thing that their request is running eyes, make sure we're included. We don't want to have this be economic prosperity for other people and not for us. So make sure we're included.

But since the US has been the richest country in the world, it tends to have more of an incumbent perspective, even though historically we psychologically identify more with the challenger in terms of growing our industries, growing a new country, et cetera, et cetera. But I think people are like, well, we don't want to lose what we have. So I think that's the second part of the American psychology. And then the third is that we have, and this is classic when you get to the shadow ages of empires, whether it's Rome or England or now, for us Americans, there's a lot more internal dispute. It's like, well, if there's going to be an AI boon, who is it going to benefit? Is it going to benefit me or benefit you? And you're not focused on the US as a kind of defining country within the world. It's more like, my political tribe versus your political tribe, my region versus your region, my racial identity versus your racial identity, you know, da, da, da, da, da. And so I think there's a lot of internal, and so I think all of that sets the stage for most people being inherently somewhat skeptical. So for example, a lot of people are, you know, kind of anti-big tech companies and big tech, you know, CEOs and creators. Anyway, and they're like, this is just another reason to be anti. And even when you say, well, wait a minute, this could create a medical assistant that could, you know, essentially create high quality health care across, you know, the entire scope of the world, but also, you know, 340 million Americans, of which only something substantially less than 100 million have really good high quality health care.