IIIIIIIIII's recent activity
-
Comment on Replicating Reddit's best feature on other forums in ~tildes
-
Comment on Young adults in the US are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs in ~tech
IIIIIIIIII (edited )LinkI found this article that was posted by @Skybrian a really insightful way to understand views towards AI in the US versus China, and why Americans are framed as 'wary' and Chinese people are...I found this article that was posted by @Skybrian a really insightful way to understand views towards AI in the US versus China, and why Americans are framed as 'wary' and Chinese people are framed as 'optimistic'. It's far more complicated, which is pretty unsurprising.
I've heard a lot of opinion commentators say that China is 'optimistic' about AI and embracing it compared to the US. Usually there's a lot of wringing (?) of hands and gnashing of teeth. The linked article does a very good job of explaining why the embrace of AI isn't so much 'wow, what a great technology!'
China's culture of techno-optimism, analysts argue, may allow AI to be diffused and deployed at scale. Some analysts contrast China's Star Trek techno-optimism, which some believe will allow AI to be more quickly deployed at scale, with the West's Black Mirror mindset, wherein public anxiety about various AI risks stifles deployment.
It is too easy, however, to draw a binary between the American and Chinese responses to AI, or to think that the Chinese public would be purely enthusiastic about a technology that will automate more jobs. It is true that Chinese respondents in some surveys likely have some genuine enthusiasm — particularly many who lived through and benefited from the market transformation of the 1990s, for whom technology has been a story of concrete improvement. However, enthusiasm and fear are not mutually exclusive.
A person can genuinely believe some AI products are beneficial and feel they have no real choice but to adopt it; can welcome a technology because it seems useful while worried that not mastering the usefulness renders themselves obsolete. Most survey questions were too binary in design to shed light on which sentiment is driving the response, or a respondent’s ratio of enthusiasm to anxiety.
The AI wave is compared to China becoming a market economy, when China shifted away from the danwei system and laid off many workers, especially in the Northeast.
Before [mass layoffs because of the "reduce headcount, increase efficiency" policy], most workers' lives were organized around the danwei — the work unit that was not simply an employer but a total social world.
The danwei provided housing, medical care, pensions, childcare, and entertainment. Colleagues were neighbors. People were born in the danwei clinic, went to danwei-sponsored schools, worked in danwei upon graduation, found partners through danwei-organized dates, and moved into danwei-sponsored dorms or housing.
From birth to death, a worker’s life was closely linked to their danwei. In his 2004 book, sociologist Li Hanlin argues that danwei was not only a workplace but also a chosen lifestyle that provided a sense of reliance and an anchor of hope. It was a society without strangers, because people formed close bonds through everyday work and life. Danwei gave people social identity and legitimacy.
People in the Northeast therefore lost not only income, but their way of life, their sense of belonging to the small communities they had built around their work, and their dignity as socialist workers.
In the literature around suicide in volunteer militaries post-exit, the loss of purpose, loss of identity, and loss of community are the three factors most commonly identified as risk factors for veterans taking their lives. I don't think the author was intending to draw a direct parralel, but if someone came along and said I was being replaced by AI with no chance for redeployment, I think I'd feel similarly to this person:
Many felt deceived when forced to sign labor contracts that stripped away their protections: "I believed in the government and the party. I relied on the enterprise for a living, and the enterprise also needed me for further development,” said one laid-off mining worker in rural Beijing. “I didn't have the slightest idea that the enterprise would take advantage of me.”
I think partly because I live in a social democracy, I'm perhaps at least partly aware that 'the enterprise takes advantage of me'. There are other political parties offering alternative ideas, and I'm familliar with them.
But being laid off in white-collar America seems to carry with it way less social stigma than it would in my country, where you have to essentially break the law to be fired. People online talk about mass layoffs as bad luck, or just a fact of life, which is really hard for me to wrap my head around.
If I was American, of course I'd be wary of AI. My concern wouldn't be that it would meaningfully replace me or do a better job. My concern would be it'd be another bullshit way to justify mass layoffs. I don't know how they used to be justified (quarterly projections? offshoring? automation?) but the way people talk about AI, it seems like a cheat code for executives looking to fire people.
For some reason, most people just seem to hear AI in the context of job losses and go 'well, I guess it's the future' without questioning whether it actually works. If I was a kid in the US, of course I'd be wary of it. And because I likely would have used it for high school and college, I might be more aware of its limitations than the people making the decisions about its mass deployment without regulation.
That's awesome! Thank you.
Before AskHistorians codified the flair system and mass-removal for bad replies, I used to use the little 'Friend' tag to mean, 'This person has consistently provided high-quality, well-researched answers using current historical sources.' If I saw a little orange F, I'd know that the thread was at least worth reading.
It'll be good to use it on Tildes just to tag someone I've had a nice discussion with, or someone who's knowledgeable about something and has interesting things to say.