Can US afford to lose automation race?

The US has traditionally been a nation of optimists about technology. But just when the world seems poised for a technologically-driven productivity boom, Americans have acquired a dour outlook about the march of progress. Growing fears that not everyone will share in the benefits is leading to resistance that threatens to hold the nation back. Recapturing the bold attitudes of yesteryear will require more than rhetoric — it’ll require sweeping policy changes.
You’d think now would be the time for Americans to come together in shared adulation of technology. After all, innovative mRNA vaccines are in the process of saving the nation from the greatest pandemic in a century and freeing people to resume normal lives. In the future, the same techniques may be used to defeat cancer. Meanwhile, an explosion of innovation in solar power and batteries is promising to drastically reduce the costs of averting climate change; 10 years down the line, it’ll be furnishing the country with energy so cheap that it could spark a new productivity boom.
And remote work technologies are allowing many people to live far more flexible lives. Other emerging technologies like lab-grown meat, artificial intelligence, Crispr and synthetic biology hold out promises of even greater wonders in the near future.
Many Americans are still techno-optimists in some ways. Technology is the factor cited most as having improved life over the last half century. But in recent years, it seems like this optimism has been gradually eroded, replaced in part by skepticism and fear.
Instead of the nation celebrating the conquest of Covid-19, as we did with the polio vaccine decades ago, Americans turned the vaccine into a culture war and many people refused to get inoculated. But the technology Americans fear above all others is AI.

—Bloomberg