FT's Tett asks why America hates AI as Asia stays bullish
TL;DR
- Gillian Tett's Nov. 7 Financial Times column headlines its question flatly: 'Why does America hate AI?'
- She attributes the East-West AI sentiment gap to 'differences in economics, public policy, and cultural patterns.'
- Tett reads voter hostility to Big Tech as a force that helped shape the US midterm elections.
Gillian Tett's Financial Times column poses the question in its own headline: 'Why does America hate AI?' Her framing is that 'differences in economics, public policy, and cultural patterns' explain why Western publics have cooled on the technology while Asia and emerging economies lean the other way.
'Voter hostility to Big Tech helped shape the US midterms, and similar fears are spreading through the west,' reads the column's dek, 'but look east and attitudes are dramatically more optimistic.'
Her read of the midterm result as evidence rather than noise lands the same week the Bank of England put the UK's three-year AI productivity gain at 0.5% and flagged that firms are cutting hiring rather than firing as the tooling arrives. It is the kind of data point the pessimism side of the Western debate has been reaching for, and it sits alongside the jobs beat we've been tracking.
Originally reported by ft.com
Read the original article →Original headline: FT's Gillian Tett Argues Economics and Wage Stagnation Explain the West's AI Pessimism Gap