4 ms·

Outside of America people aren't really stressed about AI. Like you go to Vietnam or Vienna they mostly just think that they will have a good life with AI. It's

Outside of America people aren't really stressed about AI. Like you go to Vietnam or Vienna they mostly just think that they will have a good life with AI. It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. The problem isn't the AI it's that your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job. American's need to decenter their self worth from their jobs. Like when I quit Microsoft I literally thought I was dying, but that's all an illusion from the corporations.

skywhopper 9mo ago
I admit I am suspicious of the claim that you know what all Americans, Austrians, or Vietnamese think about anything.
testfrequency 9mo ago
I would argue this says more about how Americans view and treat life as their work instead of treating the world as their life.
briantakita 9mo ago
It's part of the messianic end-times fervor that has been with America since the beginning...which is useful for imperial management...As it provides a constant source of existential judgement and dread...that religious/quasi-religious administrators can exploit.
pelasaco 9mo ago
Vienna? lol
- tomjakubowski 9mo ago
  An art school in Vienna recently admitted an "AI student" as a publicity stunt. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/02/this-ai-successfully-applied-to-become-an-art-student-at-a-university-in-vienna https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/02/this-ai-successfull...
shevy-java 9mo ago
I think you do have a point here, but I should like to point out that, since you mentioned Vienna, barely anyone here sees AI being tightly integrated into anything. Sure, smartphone users may use it; and exams at universities may say "don't use AI", so people use it - but for most everyday stuff it is really barely noticeable here. This is why I also disagree with "they will have a good life with AI", because it assumes that AI plays a huge role here, which it really does not. The AI hype is definitely much bigger in the USA - on that part we concur.
- mips_avatar 9mo ago
  Yeah but even if you believe the hype, if you're in a functioning country you don't think that your ability to house your family wrests on AI being worse at excel than you.
ewuhic 9mo ago
I am from Vienna, and this is completely false. Likewise, my friends from many countries, incl. Vietnam, also share the sentiment you describe as "American". Your point has no standing.
- mips_avatar 9mo ago
  Ok well I didn't meet everyone in Vienna or Vietnam, but those I did meet hadn't been laid off in the name of AI (yesterday three of my friends were laid off from Amazon). And if you're laid off in Vienna you still have access to healthcare, and there's a functioning safety net, and just generally a sense that you're not alone in this. In the united states my apartment has a homeless man living beneath it and every night you hear him either screaming because he doesn't have access to drugs or laughing because he does. There's a not so subtle attitude that maybe people like that deserve to die. So yes maybe people in Vienna don't like AI, but you are wrong that they fear it in the way Americans do.
  - ewuhic 9mo ago
    You have a very rosy picture of non-Pax-Americana.
    - mips_avatar 9mo ago
      Well I also visited Ethiopia this year and I got to hear first hand about the genocide in Tigray, I'm very aware of the horrifying atrocities that happen when social order and human rights break down.
      - ewuhic 9mo ago
        [flagged]
  - tim333 9mo ago
    I think US social issues and AI are rather separate. We have quite a few AI worriers from the UK, Hinton being maybe the best known.
Avicebron 9mo ago
It's because most people are already teetering on the edge. The difference between working in software vs anywhere else in the US is that the average atlassianer or similar is spending 3 months 4 times a year writing js from beach resorts up and down Europe while keeping a condo in new york. The rest can't afford to own a home or dental insurance. So when people are threatening those people who barely have anything as it is they get heated.
alexjplant 9mo ago
For a while my job was part of my identity in the way you describe not because "lol hypercapitalist American" but because I like computers and computers also pay the bills. I was writing software and doing technical stuff from a young age because I enjoyed it. I fell into doing it professionally because it was an obvious path. It didn't help that when you do this older people like it because they can use you as free/cheap labor which an impressionable kid might mistake for actual praise. It turns out I like other stuff too but it's hard to talk to people socially about obscure New Wave bands and continental philosophy and 90s neo-noir films whereas computers and gizmos and apps are a common frame of reference. I guarantee you that these people exist in other countries too. Not everybody is a tech bro strawman.
advael 9mo ago
To "decenter [one's] self worth from [one's] job" would presumably require the fact that one's "access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job", no? This is a policy problem that needs to be solved by collective action, not a mindset problem that can be solved by personal growth
- mips_avatar 9mo ago
  No you have to decenter yourself from your pay to achieve it. People accept things like cutting of medicaid because they see their job success as a moral success. There's a lot you can do to start being the good in the world that doesn't require Washington's permission.
  - advael 9mo ago
    I can't parse what distinction you're trying to draw here. When I say "collective action" I mean exactly things like exerting political pressure toward objectives like expanding rather than reducing healthcare coverage provided by governments, such as medicaid. The notion that solutions that involve changing the policy of governments "require[s] Washington's permission" seems to reject the notion that we exert power collectively via democracy, but your proposed example of what someone shouldn't accept suggests that this is an issue of how people fail to see the value in exerting said power, for which the prescription would presumably be doing so? I don't understand what you're driving at or even why you think we're in disagreement
    - mips_avatar 9mo ago
      Sorry I think you're completely right, I'm frustrated that collective action here is so hard to come by. I think that we feel really isolated because we don't see ourselves as part of a larger whole and becoming less isolated involves leaving behind this identity tied to our economic output.
onlyrealcuzzo 9mo ago
> It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking. AI is not going to immediately replace food service work, manual labor, farming, hospitality, etc. But it might replace quite high-paid software jobs, finance jobs, legal jobs, etc. One, if AI is good at anything it's things at least tangential to this. Two, these have costs high enough that off-setting is at least worth trying. My suspicion is that ultimately it will lead to more of these types of jobs, though it could easily come with a huge reduction - and the jobs aren't guaranteed to be in the same countries. You could create 3x as many of these jobs, and still end up with -25% of them in the US. Who knows.
- mips_avatar 9mo ago
  The tech jobs were cushy because the tech companies bribed ambitious people to keep them from starting their own companies. Like it wasn't about hiring them because you needed them it was to keep them from competing against you. Like this was always a deal with the devil, but the idea that Microsoft has more of a right to the monopoly it has over OS operating systems than their employees have access to their healthcare is wrong. Like I think a lot of people are waking up to the idea that the promises their companies made to them were like the promises the devil made in that theirs fine print and they sold the company more than they realized. Additionally all the startups offering to automate whitecollar work are going to run into a problem when they realize the jobs never needed to be done.
- danaris 9mo ago
  > It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking. What an arrogant statement. Lots of people outside America have cushy jobs. What's much more likely to be uniquely American is that if you lose your job there's nothing there to help you.
_ea1k 9mo ago
A big part of it is insurance. Family coverage can easily cost $15-20k per year in the US. Avoiding the need to pay for this out of pocket drives a lot of people into less than optimal job dependence.
- mips_avatar 9mo ago
  That and housing, and inflation during covid. Like there's this idea that you don't really deserve anything in the United States.
raincole 9mo ago
> your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job Lmao. America has worse social welfare than most developed countries, but it's still a heaven compared to most of the world. What you can find in food bank is a feast for billions of people on this planet. American people are stressed about AI because American people are expensive. Like hella expensive. So the incentive to replace American workers is very strong.
hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago
This is fantasy land. Yeah, a rural farmer who’s never exposed to AI except when it made it possible for her to communicate with someone visiting the farm who dint speak the same languages isn’t worried about AI. But policy makers, technologists, economists, the elite abs other educated people aware of more than the basics of AI are all concerned about its impacts.
- defrost 9mo ago
  Or, local to where I am, rural farmers using AI bots to hint them on capital machine repairs (their gear runs into the millions), summarise ANOVA trials on grain crop samples, reinforce their personal conspiracy theories and biases, and answer a huge run of everyday queries. Some can see the benefits. Some (with overlap) can see the downsides (wrong answers and enforcing bad traits). > But policy makers, technologists, economists, the elite a[nd] other educated people .. also overlap with rural farmers. I think a problem here is your image of what a rural farmer is. A good many here are multi millionaires, in assets at least, have children in elite private schools, have family members in local, state, and federal government who started out farming, went to university, have careers that may include farming on the side, and retire to farming. Next you'll be saying grandmothers can't code weather modelling and prediction software on Cyber 205's or something equally daft.
treenode 9mo ago
This isn't true. People in India are worried about AI quite a bit.

skywhopper 9mo ago

I admit I am suspicious of the claim that you know what all Americans, Austrians, or Vietnamese think about anything.

testfrequency 9mo ago

I would argue this says more about how Americans view and treat life as their work instead of treating the world as their life.

briantakita 9mo ago

It's part of the messianic end-times fervor that has been with America since the beginning...which is useful for imperial management...As it provides a constant source of existential judgement and dread...that religious/quasi-religious administrators can exploit.

pelasaco 9mo ago

Vienna? lol

tomjakubowski 9mo ago
An art school in Vienna recently admitted an "AI student" as a publicity stunt. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/02/this-ai-successfully-applied-to-become-an-art-student-at-a-university-in-vienna https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/02/this-ai-successfull...

shevy-java 9mo ago

I think you do have a point here, but I should like to point out that, since you mentioned Vienna, barely anyone here sees AI being tightly integrated into anything. Sure, smartphone users may use it; and exams at universities may say "don't use AI", so people use it - but for most everyday stuff it is really barely noticeable here. This is why I also disagree with "they will have a good life with AI", because it assumes that AI plays a huge role here, which it really does not. The AI hype is definitely much bigger in the USA - on that part we concur.

mips_avatar 9mo ago
Yeah but even if you believe the hype, if you're in a functioning country you don't think that your ability to house your family wrests on AI being worse at excel than you.

ewuhic 9mo ago

I am from Vienna, and this is completely false. Likewise, my friends from many countries, incl. Vietnam, also share the sentiment you describe as "American". Your point has no standing.

mips_avatar 9mo ago
Ok well I didn't meet everyone in Vienna or Vietnam, but those I did meet hadn't been laid off in the name of AI (yesterday three of my friends were laid off from Amazon). And if you're laid off in Vienna you still have access to healthcare, and there's a functioning safety net, and just generally a sense that you're not alone in this. In the united states my apartment has a homeless man living beneath it and every night you hear him either screaming because he doesn't have access to drugs or laughing because he does. There's a not so subtle attitude that maybe people like that deserve to die. So yes maybe people in Vienna don't like AI, but you are wrong that they fear it in the way Americans do.
- ewuhic 9mo ago
  You have a very rosy picture of non-Pax-Americana.
  - mips_avatar 9mo ago
    Well I also visited Ethiopia this year and I got to hear first hand about the genocide in Tigray, I'm very aware of the horrifying atrocities that happen when social order and human rights break down.
    - ewuhic 9mo ago
      [flagged]
- tim333 9mo ago
  I think US social issues and AI are rather separate. We have quite a few AI worriers from the UK, Hinton being maybe the best known.

Avicebron 9mo ago

It's because most people are already teetering on the edge. The difference between working in software vs anywhere else in the US is that the average atlassianer or similar is spending 3 months 4 times a year writing js from beach resorts up and down Europe while keeping a condo in new york. The rest can't afford to own a home or dental insurance. So when people are threatening those people who barely have anything as it is they get heated.

alexjplant 9mo ago

For a while my job was part of my identity in the way you describe not because "lol hypercapitalist American" but because I like computers and computers also pay the bills. I was writing software and doing technical stuff from a young age because I enjoyed it. I fell into doing it professionally because it was an obvious path. It didn't help that when you do this older people like it because they can use you as free/cheap labor which an impressionable kid might mistake for actual praise. It turns out I like other stuff too but it's hard to talk to people socially about obscure New Wave bands and continental philosophy and 90s neo-noir films whereas computers and gizmos and apps are a common frame of reference. I guarantee you that these people exist in other countries too. Not everybody is a tech bro strawman.

advael 9mo ago

To "decenter [one's] self worth from [one's] job" would presumably require the fact that one's "access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job", no? This is a policy problem that needs to be solved by collective action, not a mindset problem that can be solved by personal growth

mips_avatar 9mo ago
No you have to decenter yourself from your pay to achieve it. People accept things like cutting of medicaid because they see their job success as a moral success. There's a lot you can do to start being the good in the world that doesn't require Washington's permission.
- advael 9mo ago
  I can't parse what distinction you're trying to draw here. When I say "collective action" I mean exactly things like exerting political pressure toward objectives like expanding rather than reducing healthcare coverage provided by governments, such as medicaid. The notion that solutions that involve changing the policy of governments "require[s] Washington's permission" seems to reject the notion that we exert power collectively via democracy, but your proposed example of what someone shouldn't accept suggests that this is an issue of how people fail to see the value in exerting said power, for which the prescription would presumably be doing so? I don't understand what you're driving at or even why you think we're in disagreement
  - mips_avatar 9mo ago
    Sorry I think you're completely right, I'm frustrated that collective action here is so hard to come by. I think that we feel really isolated because we don't see ourselves as part of a larger whole and becoming less isolated involves leaving behind this identity tied to our economic output.

onlyrealcuzzo 9mo ago

> It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking. AI is not going to immediately replace food service work, manual labor, farming, hospitality, etc. But it might replace quite high-paid software jobs, finance jobs, legal jobs, etc. One, if AI is good at anything it's things at least tangential to this. Two, these have costs high enough that off-setting is at least worth trying. My suspicion is that ultimately it will lead to more of these types of jobs, though it could easily come with a huge reduction - and the jobs aren't guaranteed to be in the same countries. You could create 3x as many of these jobs, and still end up with -25% of them in the US. Who knows.

mips_avatar 9mo ago
The tech jobs were cushy because the tech companies bribed ambitious people to keep them from starting their own companies. Like it wasn't about hiring them because you needed them it was to keep them from competing against you. Like this was always a deal with the devil, but the idea that Microsoft has more of a right to the monopoly it has over OS operating systems than their employees have access to their healthcare is wrong. Like I think a lot of people are waking up to the idea that the promises their companies made to them were like the promises the devil made in that theirs fine print and they sold the company more than they realized. Additionally all the startups offering to automate whitecollar work are going to run into a problem when they realize the jobs never needed to be done.
danaris 9mo ago
> It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking. What an arrogant statement. Lots of people outside America have cushy jobs. What's much more likely to be uniquely American is that if you lose your job there's nothing there to help you.

_ea1k 9mo ago

A big part of it is insurance. Family coverage can easily cost $15-20k per year in the US. Avoiding the need to pay for this out of pocket drives a lot of people into less than optimal job dependence.

mips_avatar 9mo ago
That and housing, and inflation during covid. Like there's this idea that you don't really deserve anything in the United States.

raincole 9mo ago

> your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job Lmao. America has worse social welfare than most developed countries, but it's still a heaven compared to most of the world. What you can find in food bank is a feast for billions of people on this planet. American people are stressed about AI because American people are expensive. Like hella expensive. So the incentive to replace American workers is very strong.

hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago

This is fantasy land. Yeah, a rural farmer who’s never exposed to AI except when it made it possible for her to communicate with someone visiting the farm who dint speak the same languages isn’t worried about AI. But policy makers, technologists, economists, the elite abs other educated people aware of more than the basics of AI are all concerned about its impacts.

defrost 9mo ago
Or, local to where I am, rural farmers using AI bots to hint them on capital machine repairs (their gear runs into the millions), summarise ANOVA trials on grain crop samples, reinforce their personal conspiracy theories and biases, and answer a huge run of everyday queries. Some can see the benefits. Some (with overlap) can see the downsides (wrong answers and enforcing bad traits). > But policy makers, technologists, economists, the elite a[nd] other educated people .. also overlap with rural farmers. I think a problem here is your image of what a rural farmer is. A good many here are multi millionaires, in assets at least, have children in elite private schools, have family members in local, state, and federal government who started out farming, went to university, have careers that may include farming on the side, and retire to farming. Next you'll be saying grandmothers can't code weather modelling and prediction software on Cyber 205's or something equally daft.

treenode 9mo ago

This isn't true. People in India are worried about AI quite a bit.