Ján Žilinský (TUM) 12.12.2024

V rámci Research Seminar Series in Economics máme tu čest, že nám ve čtvrtek 12.12.2024 od 12:45 do 14:15 v místnosti RB437 bude přednášet Ján Žilinský (TUM) o „he Politics of Anti-technology and Anti-AI Sentiment.“

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link.

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.

BIO: Jan Zilinsky is a research fellow at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy at the Technical University of Munich. His academic research deals with the impact of information and public opinion on political and economic outcomes. He received his doctoral degree from New York University, and his first degree in economics from Harvard University.