Original Author: Rex Woodbury
Original Title: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?
Original Translation: SpecialistXBT, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: The domestic Openclaw craze has led AI Agents to begin entering the lives of ordinary people. In the venture capital circle, almost every few weeks, new model breakthroughs, new funding myths, and grand narratives about AI soon reshaping the world appear. However, in sharp contrast to the enthusiasm in the tech and investment circles, the general public's sentiment towards AI is far from optimistic. A clear anti-AI sentiment is spreading. Why is a technology considered to be "the next industrial revolution" simultaneously evoking such strong aversion and hostility? This article attempts to explain the public sentiment paradox of the AI era from three dimensions: the history of technology, economic sentiment, and cultural psychology.
If you want to feel the current emotional climate, there is one place particularly worth checking out: the comments section of TikTok. When you start reading the comments on TikTok, you will repeatedly notice one emotion: a sharp, intense, almost instinctual hatred towards AI.
Here are some comments I grabbed from a video last night:
The atmosphere… is not great.
I've been thinking about this issue recently. My column "Digital Native" focuses on the intersection between people and technology. And now, people seem to really detest the most important technology of our time. Clearly, this tension brings challenges: when many refuse to use AI, it is difficult for AI to achieve widespread adoption.
A few days ago, someone asked me how many times I use ChatGPT in a day. I said I have never used it, and they were shocked. I will continue to hold disdain for AI.
I believe Silicon Valley is not fully aware of how deep the aversion to AI is among most Americans. I also think Silicon Valley needs to seriously consider how to address this backlash.
This article will discuss three parts:
1. A Brief History of Technological Skepticism
2. Why is AI so hated?
3. How to address the PR issues of AI
Without further ado, let's get started.
A Brief History of Technological Skepticism
Technological skepticism has always existed. Even the seemingly mundane art of writing was once criticized: Socrates, in Plato's "Phaedrus," believed that the invention of writing would "bring forgetting into the soul," causing people's memory to deteriorate. He wasn't entirely wrong but also clearly alarmist. After humanity transitioned from oral memory to writing, it was able to construct more complex and advanced thoughts, thus forming more complex and sophisticated societies. Of course, writing can sometimes prevent forgetting (for example: shopping lists). Moreover, we know Socrates' viewpoint precisely because Plato wrote it down. It's amusing how things work.
When the printing press appeared in the 1500s, Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner warned that information overload could leave the human brain "confused and harmed." Two hundred years later, with the emergence of newspapers, a French politician proposed that newspapers would isolate readers and destroy the exhilarating experience of collectively obtaining news from the church pulpit. Although I have never heard the news from a pulpit, I can confidently say: I prefer reading the New York Times while having coffee.
By the 1900s, automobiles also became the target of criticism. Speaking of the New York Times: this paper once published a headline reading "National Fury Against Motor Vehicles' Killing" (you can still see it now). There was a widely circulated statistic at the time: in the four years following World War I, the number of Americans who died in car accidents exceeded those who died on the battlefields in France.
1924 New York Times headline: "National Fury Against Motor Vehicles' Killing."
I tend to think that people were indeed correct at this point: when our children look back at history, they will likely find it hard to believe that we once crammed ourselves into 4000-pound death machines racing down the road. But the anxiety at that time was actually meaningless: the magic had been released from the bottle and could not be put back in.
There are many similar stories. Phonographs were blamed for robbing the vitality of live performances that were authentic and full of human emotion; critics at that time believed that recorded concerts would kill amateur musicians and completely ruin musical taste. (It's hard to imagine what those critics would say if they saw suno.ai.) Meanwhile, television is arguably one of the most famously controversial technologies. Its nicknames include “the idiot box” and “the fool's box.” Critics argued that television would destroy community relationships, shorten attention spans, and encourage violence. It probably did achieve all three.
In 1948, a boy reacted to seeing TV for the first time.
As we entered this century, the internet and social media also faced backlash, some of which was reasonable and some not. The pace of technological advancement has always been stable and predictable, and the human backlash against innovation has been similar. Humanity has a long-standing tradition of fearing the things it creates.
Frankenstein's monster is probably the best metaphor for humanity's fear of its own creations.
Of course, every new technology brings its benefits and drawbacks; technology itself is a mirror of society. As Marshall McLuhan said, "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."
And all of this brings us to AI—arguably the most reviled technology of my lifetime.
Why is AI so hated?
The backlash against AI follows some of the historical patterns mentioned above, but I believe the sentiment towards AI is not merely skepticism but hostility. I see several reasons:
AI emerges at a terribly bad time for the public image of the tech industry.
By the time we entered the 2010s, the tech industry was cool. Everyone wanted to work at Google or Facebook, playing ping pong after enjoying free lunches. In 2013, a movie even depicted Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson interning at Google. That same year, Sheryl Sandberg published "Lean In". Marissa Mayer was revitalizing Yahoo, Apple's spaceship headquarters was under construction, and WeWork was still a rapidly expanding real estate tech company. The atmosphere was great.
Fast forward ten years to the emergence of ChatGPT, and the public's attitude towards the tech industry had shifted. Facebook had gone through the Cambridge Analytica scandal, new studies revealed Instagram's impact on mental health, and far too many people lost money on meme coins and pricey JPEGs. The atmosphere had soured.
Some studies suggest that people's views on AI are closely related to their views on social media. At the time ChatGPT was released, countries with more positive evaluations of social media were also more accepting of AI. Meanwhile, those who considered social media a threat to democracy...
Simply put: AI's timing is bad. People no longer trust tech companies.
Fear of job loss is real and occurs during a time when people feel bad about the economy.
AI has also emerged in a tough economic environment. ChatGPT was released in November 2022, a time when most Americans felt quite pessimistic about the economy.
People weren't eagerly awaiting a disruptive technology that might take away jobs. When they hear terms like "copilot" and "augmentation", they think: layoffs. Once again, AI's timing is not great.
The creative industry shapes culture, and AI poses a unique threat to creative work.
Some of the sharpest criticisms of AI come from the creative industry. You can see this on TikTok.
Last year, Adrien Brody won an Oscar for "The Brutalist," but later filmmakers revealed that they used AI to improve Brody's Hungarian accent in the film, which continues to be criticized by TikTok users. Taylor Swift faced backlash when using AI-generated videos to promote "The Life of a Showgirl." In an episode of the TV series "The Studio" (a very excellent show), an angry audience member shouted at Seth Rogen's character for using AI in a Kool-Aid film, and Ice Cube even shouted, "F*ck AI!"
Then there's the 2023 SAG-AFRA actors union strike— the longest strike in Hollywood history—after which we even began to see AI actors like Tilly Norwood emerge. A true headline from the Hollywood Reporter yesterday was:
Creative workers are the ones shaping culture and public opinion. If AI is seen as a threat to the survival of creative work, its impact will ripple throughout the entire cultural sector.
AI is seen as an attack on identity.
The fifth reason is the most vague, yet it might be the most important. AI makes people feel inferior to machines in things they take the most pride in. What does this mean? Look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs: AI is attacking the top of the pyramid.
Previous waves of automation often occurred at the bottom of the pyramid. For example, steam engines and assembly lines replaced manual labor (the physiological labor necessary for survival). Early software automated clerical and administrative work. Some indeed felt replaced by this, but automation did not penetrate the areas that people believed represented their highest value.
Now AI is climbing to the top of the pyramid and beginning to dismantle it. Many define themselves through creativity—writing, painting, music. Many also take pride in their skills in certain jobs—programming, legal work, customer service. AI is intruding into these identity domains, and doing so very quickly. If a graphic designer builds their self-identity on creating stunning animations, and Midjourney can generate a "better" image in seconds... that is indeed hard to accept.
I think a comment on TikTok summarizes this well.
I hope AI does the mundane tasks I don’t want to do, not the hobbies I want to do.
Commenters angrily criticizing AI on TikTok are often knowledge workers at the top of the educational and economic pyramid, who once thought they would not be replaced by technology. AI threatens the most privileged, which almost overturns the historical narrative of technological development.
How to solve the PR problems of AI
Most technological backlash stems from an instinctive fear of the new. But the backlash against AI seems to be a confluence of multiple factors: broken trust, economic anxiety, and a cultural atmosphere ready to reject any new technology, not to mention a technology that touches such deep human domains. Yet the magic has come out of the bottle, and AI does indeed have many amazing applications; I am a staunch supporter of AI myself. So how do we address this PR issue?
Start from the bottom of the pyramid.
The most compelling applications of AI are actually those that save lives. For example, AI can detect cancer earlier than any radiologist. Such applications directly address humanity's most basic need (to survive) and should be more emphasized.
Tell stories about "pain points" rather than "capabilities".
Some companies we've invested in at Daybreak have quietly reverted their .ai domain names back to .com. Entrepreneurs need to be very cautious in communicating AI to customers. They should first emphasize the problems to be solved. Nurses don’t care whether they are using Opus or Sonnet; they care whether the product helps them complete their paperwork faster. Most tech industry press conferences emphasize what AI can do (model capabilities) rather than what AI can solve for ordinary people. The narrative should shift from "this model has a trillion parameters" to "this product can eliminate four hours of repetitive work."
Change the spokespersons—stop letting VCs do the talking.
Maybe this is a signal for me to end this article. No one wants to hear VCs talk. The loudest voices supporting AI come from tech CEOs and venture capitalists, and these two groups happen to be the ones the American public trusts least. If I were responsible for marketing AI, I would have real users as the advertisers: farmers, accountants, home care workers. Even OpenAI or Anthropic, if they showcased real users in a Super Bowl ad, would be more convincing than vague inspirational montages (OpenAI) or jabs at competitors (Anthropic).
Acknowledge changes in the labor market, then emphasize retraining and new job opportunities.
Many entrepreneurs and VCs like to cite data showing that the new jobs created by AI will outnumber the jobs it eliminates. But that doesn’t matter to those who lose their jobs. The term "Luddite" originates from British textile workers in the 19th century who organized to destroy weaving machines in the 1810s.
These textile workers likely realized that the new machines would ultimately make society better; but they also understood that these machines would make their lives worse in the meantime. In the face of the significant shocks to the labor market, the right approach is to acknowledge this shock and genuinely push for funds and projects aimed at retraining workers.
Make humans more visible in AI products.
If I were Pixar, I would host a contest: see who in the world can make the best animated short using AI tools. In this exercise, technology levels the competitive playing field: anyone with a good story can create beautiful works from their own living room. The artist remains at the center. If we had more projects like this, people would better understand how AI amplifies human creativity and serves as an equalizing tool. Just a thought.
Conclusion
Last month, Trump's State of the Union address became the longest in history, surpassing Clinton's 2000 address by 20 minutes. Yet in his nearly two-hour speech, Trump mentioned AI only three times.
Clearly, a lot is happening in the world right now; we are at an extremely fragile geopolitical moment (I strongly recommend Ray Dalio's article on the collapse of the world order). But at the same time, we are also at the early stages of what may be the largest technological transformation of this generation, or perhaps even in history. A two-hour speech mentioning AI only three times indicates that we are still in a very early stage.
Globally, there are still billions of people who have never used AI. In the United States, many people even take pride in having never used AI.
This is clearly unsustainable. The widespread adoption of AI is rapidly approaching, yet it is crashing into the strongest anti-tech sentiment seen in a century (possibly the strongest in history).
Silicon Valley confidently believes that AI will ultimately prevail; of course, it will. Technology always prevails. But this confidence also makes them appear arrogant in the face of a skeptical public, leaving behind a trail filled with resentment that could ultimately backfire on Silicon Valley. The coolest thing about Silicon Valley is its long history of building technology for billions of people. But if billions of people see you as the villain, things will become very difficult.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
