The Politics of Anti-technology and Anti-AI Sentiment

• In Event: Citizen's Perceptions of AI

Abstract

The growth of new technology, in particular new communication technology, has raised questions about technology’s role in society. Critics argue that it has increased hate speech, polarization and radicalized the electorate. Others have emphasized the democratizing potential of tools that facilitate collective action. Beyond these macro-effects, critics argue that it has a negative effect on users ranging from disinformation hazards to harms to mental health. The coming AI revolution promises to accelerate these trends. However, people’s general attitudes towards new technology and their downstream political consequences remain undertheorized and understudied. To better understand citizens’ general orientation towards technology, we develop a new anti-technology scale and test it on two diverse samples of Americans. Our scale measures three distinct areas of anti-technology attitudes: 1) attitudes towards social media, 2) attitudes towards artificial intelligence, and 3) concerns about modernity. We show that these areas form a general latent anti-technology orientation. We then show that this general anti-tech orientation predicts attitudes towards technology policies and support for contentious actions against tech companies. Finally, looking at specific attitudes towards AI, we use a pairwise comparison experiment to understand which pro and anti-AI arguments are most persuasive.

Authors

• Jan Zilinsky, Technical University of Munich

• Thomas Zeitzoff, American University