Three months ago, Gillian Tett found herself in a bookstore in Xi'an, China, where an articulate young woman asked whether artificial intelligence would take all their jobs. The question sounded wearily familiar. In America, barely a week passes without talk of an "AI-pocalypse," with fears that AI might wipe out jobs, unleash cyber attacks or worse.
This week's US midterm elections showed how potent the opposition to data centres has become. According to NBC, a majority of voters said data centres were a key factor in shaping their vote, and politicians have pledged moratoriums. The concern is framed in environmental terms, yet surveys show Americans accept other energy-guzzling buildings, such as Amazon distribution centres. As pollster Patrick Ruffini puts it, "There is strong revealed preference against AI relative to older digital services." In plain English, American voters hate it.
China is different. When an FT reporter visited a data centre project in Shaoguan, he found unease, but it was mainly about whether local villagers would share in the economic benefits, not opposition to AI in general. Bing Song, a Chinese academic now president of the Berggruen Institute, says there is "far less existential fear than we see in the US and in western mainstream media." Surveys confirm that China, along with much of Asia, is far more optimistic than America about AI's upside, while Europe sits in between.
Some might attribute this to repression, since Chinese president Xi Jinping views AI as core to China's future. However, fear alone does not explain the gap. Democracies such as Japan and South Korea are also very optimistic, as are most emerging markets. At a global regulators' event in Cambridge, western representatives fretted about winning public support, while emerging-market officials did not. As Democrats take control of Congress and gain more influence over AI policy, the key question is why this gap exists and what each side might learn from the other.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing