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The One Chart That Explains Everything - by Howard Yu

substack.com · 3,112 words · saved by 1 readers

If one chart captures the global mood as the new year begins, it isn’t a stock index, an inflation line, or a defense budget. Here is a scatter plot mapping the world’s emotional response to artificial intelligence. On the X-axis, you have excitement; on the Y-axis, nervousness. The world splits into two distinct clusters. You have the United States and much of Western Europe in one cluster: wary, anxious, bracing for impact. In the other, China and its Asian neighbors: optimistic, eager, racing to adopt. This divergence made no sense to me for the longest time. Why would the United States, birthplace of the silicon chip and home of OpenAI, Google, and the modern internet, be the most terrified of its own creation? Why would China, a nation the West sees as rigidly controlled, be the most buoyant amid technological chaos? I couldn’t understand it until I started reading. Seven books I binged finally gave me the answer. They took me from factory floors in Shenzhen to a designer’s desk i

If one chart captures the global mood lately, it isn’t a stock index, an inflation line, or a defense budget. Here is a scatter plot mapping the world’s emotional response to artificial intelligence. On the X-axis, you have excitement; on the Y-axis, nervousness. The world splits into two distinct clusters. You have the United States and much of Western Europe in one cluster: wary, anxious, bracing for impact. In the other, China and its Asian neighbors: optimistic, eager, racing to adopt. This divergence made no sense to me for the longest time. Why would the United States, birthplace…

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