OXFORD — The United States is both the home of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution and among the places where people like the technology the least. According to Ipsos’s 2026 AI Monitor, 85 percent of respondents in China, 80 percent in India, and 77 percent in Indonesia think that AI products and services offer more benefits than drawbacks, compared to only 38 percent in the U.S., with similarly low shares in Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Such attitudes are likely to shape the technology’s adoption and long-run implications for growth. In early 19th-century Britain, the Luddites famously smashed the mechanical looms that they saw threatening their livelihoods. Parliament responded by making machine-breaking a capital offense. The army was deployed to quash the riots, and Britain went on to become the workshop of the world. By contrast, in China, craft guilds were able to block automation in cotton, silk, and other industries until the turn of the 20th century. While China’s failure to industrialize alongside Europe had many causes, economists Klaus Desmet, Avner