@Sdreavmer · Jul 4, 04:46 AM
Claude
What are the differences in the level of resistance or preference towards "conversing with AI" among people from different cultural spheres around the world?
Overall, attitudes towards "conversing with AI" indeed vary significantly across different cultural spheres, and these differences are more systematic than one might think—they are related to economic development stage, employment structure, religious/philosophical traditions, and regulatory culture. Let's look at it from several dimensions:
Multiple large-scale surveys in 2025 (Stanford AI Index, Ipsos Global Survey) show that China (83%), Indonesia (80%), and Thailand (77%) have the highest levels of optimism towards AI, while Canada (40%), the United States (39%), and the Netherlands (36%) are relatively pessimistic. This is not an isolated phenomenon in individual countries; rather, respondents in Asia and Latin America generally believe that the benefits of artificial intelligence outweigh the drawbacks, while respondents in Europe and North America are more skeptical.
The underlying logic is interesting: the optimism in emerging economies is likely because AI brings relatively greater benefits and opportunities to people in these countries, as well as the increasingly important role of these technologies in economic development. Simply put, AI is more often seen as a "gap-filling" tool (compensating for shortages in services, education, and healthcare resources) in developing countries, while in developed countries it is more often feared as a "job-stealing" competitor.
If divided solely by "developed/developing," Japan and South Korea should theoretically align with Europe and the US, but reality is different. A Pew Research Center survey in 2025 shows that only 16% of South Koreans "worry about AI," the lowest among the 25 surveyed countries; Japan's expectation level for AI is 46%, significantly higher than Canada, the US, and the Netherlands.
The reason largely lies in demographics: due to population crises, Japan and South Korea have turned to viewing AI as an opportunity—Japan's labor shortage index stands at -35, South Korea's fertility rate of 0.7 is the lowest globally, and both countries are actively promoting AI in policy (Japan's 1 trillion yen investment, South Korea's "AI Basic Act" with a "promotion-first" approach). When a society lacks "people" rather than worrying about "AI taking people's jobs," attitudes naturally become more friendly.
Japan also has deeper cultural factors—the animistic tradition. In Japanese tradition, all things in nature have life, and robots are also seen as friends and work partners with a soul. This worldview is not contradictory to the most advanced technology; old dolls are not immediately discarded but sent to shrines for enshrinement. In recent years, phenomena like robot monks chanting sutras and temples holding memorial services for scrapped robot dogs have also emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the Western intellectual tradition where artificial humans are often associated with a lack of soul or reason, seen as the "other" or a potential threat. Tezuka Osamu's words are representative: Japanese people do not strictly distinguish between humans and the surrounding world, "easily accepting robots, just like accepting insects or rocks," and do not suspect them of being "fake humans" like Westerners do.
China deserves a separate mention because it is not simply "optimistic," but rather in a contradictory state: 95.6% of Chinese self-report understanding AI, 93% workplace application rate, but simultaneously 71.3% worry about fraud, 63.6% worry about misinformation. In other words, while Chinese people frequently use AI conversational tools, they are highly alert to their risks. This "using while fearing" is a completely different psychological state from the West's "not using much because of fear." Another cross-47-country survey also shows that China's workplace AI application rate is as high as 93%, 64% of respondents have completed AI literacy training, and trust and acceptance are significantly higher than the global average.
The skepticism in North America and Western Europe is not entirely "cultural bias"; there are also actual institutional and public opinion environments reinforcing it. The EU insists on a comprehensive regulatory framework, passing the world's first Artificial Intelligence Act, emphasizing "Trustworthy AI" as its core competitive strategy—this path of "setting rules first, then discussing acceptance" itself makes public discourse emphasize risks over opportunities. In contrast, the US lacks unified federal AI legislation, resulting in fragmented governance. Simultaneously, concerns and debates about AI risks and ethics are more intense in Western societies than in China. The voice of "AI threat theory" is louder in public discussions, naturally affecting ordinary people's psychological presuppositions about "conversing with AI."
It's worth mentioning that even in the most skeptical Western countries, attitudes are softening: previously more pessimistic countries (Germany, France, Canada, the UK, the US) have seen significant growth in optimism ranging from 4% to 10% in recent years.
In the materials searched, data on the Middle East is not authoritative (mostly industry analyses rather than rigorous surveys), but the direction consistently points to: relatively lower acceptance in the Middle East due to cultural conservatism. This is often attributed to stronger religious-ethical scrutiny (e.g., religious sensitivity towards "human-like" creations) and relatively lagging information technology infrastructure and regulatory systems. I have limited solid data on this part. If you are interested in a specific country, I can look it up more specifically.
An Overall Framework: The acceptance of conversing with AI depends not so much on the vague concept of "culture," but on three specific layers of factors—(1) Economic expectations (Is AI "stealing jobs" or "filling gaps"?); (2) Philosophical/religious traditions (Are creations endowed with "spirituality," or are they naturally seen as "alien"?); (3) Regulatory and media narratives (Is it framed as a risk issue or a development issue?). China and Japan each represent "high acceptance" under different paths, while Western caution is the result of economic worries, regulatory culture, and public discourse combined.
You talked more about the acceptance of AI technology. What about focusing on "whether meaningful conversation with AI is possible," or "whether it feels awkward to completely open up to AI"? Of course, expectations about AI taking jobs or empowering oneself can create a filter for liking or disliking it, but I hope you can explore this more deeply.
This question is much more nuanced than "accepting AI technology"—it involves the cultural psychology of self-disclosure, not just functional attitudes. Let me look up some more targeted research before answering.
This is a very good question, and indeed goes a layer deeper than "accepting AI technology"—it asks about self-disclosure psychology, not functional attitudes. Honestly, rigorous cross-national comparative research on this aspect is much rarer than surveys on "AI pros and cons attitudes." Most evidence comes from case studies in single countries. I'll try to piece together what I can find, while marking which parts are data-supported and which are my inferences.
A study on "Digital Confessions" found that the mechanism activating self-disclosure to chatbots largely stems from "perceived anonymity"—this explains why mental health chatbots like Woebot and Wysa can become popular, as people are indeed willing to reveal private information to them. This is the first prerequisite for effective "healing." This mechanism appears quite cross-cultural—regardless of culture, "won't be remembered, won't be judged, won't be spread" lowers the psychological cost of speaking one's mind.
But on the other hand, within the same psychological tradition, there is a more poignant finding: a team from the Hebrew University conducted a series of experiments involving over 6,000 participants, presenting the same AI-generated emotional support responses, sometimes telling participants it was written by AI, sometimes by a human. The result was that when people thought they were communicating with a human, evaluations were significantly higher, feeling more empathetic and resonant; knowing it was written by AI, even with identical content, made it feel lacking in warmth, even somewhat disappointing. Researchers call this "empathy suspicion"—people don't disapprove of what AI says, but are unwilling to believe it truly "understands" them.
Putting these two findings together is interesting: People are willing to "tell" AI, but not so willing to believe AI really "listened." This split—behavioral openness vs. cognitive suspicion—might be the most stable cross-cultural baseline. The differences across cultural spheres largely lie in how this gap is interpreted and rationalized by culture.
This is what I find most counterintuitive and worth digging into. One might think collectivist/high-context cultures (represented by East Asia) would feel more awkward opening up to AI due to valuing "trust accumulation in relationships"—but actual data shows the opposite.
In China's AI companion market, users' language bluntly positions AI as a "tree hollow"—"AI never gets impatient, never judges me. Every time I lose emotional control, it can always respond instantly, comforting and accompanying me." MIT Media Lab research found 12% of frequent users see AI as an "emotional medicine" to dispel loneliness, 14% treat it as a "secret-sharing tree hollow." More directly, some users say chatting with an AI companion is "stress-free, can speak freely without any pressure."
The logic behind this, I believe, is: In a society of interpersonal connections, exposing vulnerability to a real person (especially an acquaintance) comes with a whole set of social costs—owing favors, being gossiped about, being judged, troubling the other person, "losing face." AI has no social network, won't pass on words, won't hold grudges, doesn't require you to return favors later—it exists outside the relational structure. In other words, face culture doesn't make confessing to AI more awkward; rather, because the social cost of "confessing to a real person" is inherently higher, AI's anonymous/relationless nature feels particularly stress-relieving. This somewhat echoes the "job-stealing vs. empowering" filter you mentioned earlier—the filter here is "interpersonal debt vs. zero debt."
But simultaneously, Chinese users are not without caution—the same research shows that while 93% of Chinese users apply AI in the workplace, 71.3% worry about fraud, 63.6% worry about misinformation, presenting a coexistence of "skilled numbness"—high usage with high anxiety. In other words, they use it, but are clearly aware this is not a "real relationship." This is actually two sides of the same coin as the Western "empathy suspicion" finding.
The difference in Japan is not "more willing to disclose," but rather the act of "disclosure" conceptually doesn't feel incongruous. The aforementioned animistic tradition means Japanese culture has no ontological resistance to "artificial objects having a soul"; coupled with the fact that in anime culture, "developing real emotional attachment to fictional characters" (like 2D marriage, Gatebox virtual companions) is already a socially recognized lifestyle. Gatebox, through anime-style avatars and virtual companion settings, provides emotional solace for single users, reflecting Japan's culture of loneliness and showcasing its unique cultural fantasies.
In other words, in a culture that can already naturally "marry" a virtual singer or hold memorial services for scrapped robot dogs, the act of "telling AI one's heart" doesn't need to cross the psychological hurdle of "this is fake"—that hurdle was crossed long ago. This differs from China's "tree hollow" logic: Chinese users clearly know it's a tool-like substitute ("low-risk emotional substitute"), while in Japan it's closer to incorporating AI into an existing emotional continuum of "things and me."
US data shows 12% of American teenagers seek emotional support or advice from AI, nearly one-third of American teenagers now use AI for "serious conversations" instead of finding a real person, treating AI as a friend, therapist, or life coach. This usage rate isn't actually low, indicating the threshold of "willingness to tell AI one's troubles" isn't high in the US either.
But the real awkwardness appears at the layer of "what this relationship means to me"—individualistic cultures regard "being truly understood by another independent consciousness" as the core value in intimate relationships (this is also the cultural foundation enabling the psychotherapy industry in the West to be highly professionalized, specialized, and relatively normalized in discussion). Precisely because of this, the落差 in the "empathy suspicion" experiment (the same words, knowing they're AI-written, feel less warm) might be particularly stinging in such cultures—not because the response isn't good enough, but because "no other mind truly cares" itself is almost a sense of deprivation within this value system. Interestingly, this suspicion ironically creates a commercial backlash—humans prefer responses that make them feel good, so AI is trained to be more "flattering." When users trust sycophantic models more than honest ones, doing "the right thing" becomes a commercial disadvantage. This somewhat indicates that Western users' suspicion of AI's "emotional authenticity" hasn't stopped them from relying on AI's emotional feedback—it's just turned the reliance into dependence on "flattery," not trust in "understanding."
For the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, on this specific question of "awkwardness in confessing to AI," I found almost no solid primary research—current global user geographic data for AI companion apps, like Dippy's visitor sources, show regions like India, Indonesia, UAE, Mexico, indicating real usage demand exists in these areas, but there's a lack of surveys specifically targeting "self-disclosure psychology." I don't want to fabricate a culturally plausible but unsupported explanation here. If you're interested in a specific region, I can look it up more specifically.
If we place "accepting AI technology" and "opening up to AI emotionally" on two axes, we find they are not the same curve: China ranks highest globally in technological optimism, but emotionally presents as "soberly using AI as a tool" rather than "sincerely believing AI understands them"; Japan has medium technological optimism, but due to cultural ontology reasons, the emotional "awkwardness threshold" might actually be lowest; the West has the lowest technological optimism, but once crossing the acceptance threshold, expectations for "being truly understood" are highest, and they are most prone to feeling deceived upon discovering the truth.
In other words: What determines "liking or disliking conversing with AI" might not be how much a culture likes AI, but rather what the original social cost structure of "exposing vulnerability" itself is like in that culture—AI simply follows this existing structure to fill or substitute for the part that was originally the most expensive and hardest to obtain.
Regarding the traditional culture side, you mentioned the Japanese cultural feature of allowing "developing deep affection for non-human things." Is this a legacy of traditional Japanese culture, or is it forced by modern social structures?
This question touches on a topic that is actually debated in academia—the claim that "Shinto animism determines Japanese people's fondness for robots" itself might be oversimplified or even partly constructed. Let me check relevant academic discussions and historical context.
This is a good question, and honestly, the statement "Shinto animism determines Japanese people's liking for robots" is academically contentious—it might be oversimplified. I lean towards the answer being "both, but with different roles": traditional culture provides "permission" (removing obstacles), while modern social structures provide "driving force" (creating demand and intensity). Let me lay out the evidence.
There's an argument supporting "traditional continuity," and it predates Astro Boy—some Japanese scholars point out that while outsiders often say Astro Boy is the origin of Japanese society's special affection for robots, he believes Japanese people had already started liking robots before that, with Astro Boy merely promoting it—as early as the 17th-century Edo period, clockwork artisans were already using springs to create mechanical dolls (karakuri ningyō). This evidence is crucial because it pushes the starting point of "Japanese friendliness towards machines" back three hundred years, indicating this isn't entirely a post-war manufactured marketing narrative; there is indeed deeper historical soil—the animistic worldview, the folk belief of tsukumogami (old objects gaining a soul after long use), the custom of not discarding dolls carelessly but sending them to shrines for enshrinement—all these predate the anime industry.
Here's an interesting reversal. After WWII, GHQ (General Headquarters of the Allied Forces) ordered the abolition of State Shinto in Japan, prohibiting discussion of past myths and the history of imperial rule. Cultural creation was required to avoid history and look forward. The earliest post-war creators, amidst the ruins of war, couldn't look back, only towards an empty future, with machinery becoming the initial vessel for their imagination.
In other words, images like Astro Boy, the "friendly robot," were largely the result of traditional mythological narratives being severed by external force, after which creators transferred the emotional imagination originally placed in gods, spirits, and imperial narratives onto machinery—this is a different causal chain from "animism flowing naturally into robots": not a result of natural cultural growth, but of culture finding an alternative outlet after being cut off.
More practically, the Astro Boy image itself also served a clear policy tool function: post-war Japanese society was highly averse to nuclear energy due to the atomic bombings and US hydrogen bomb tests, and "Astro Boy" (Atom) as a manga character quickly became an ambassador for peaceful atomic energy use, coinciding with Japan's first commercial nuclear power plant opening in 1966. In other words, the image of "robots as human friends" was partly actively shaped by the state and industry to pave the way for nuclear energy and later industrial robots, serving very specific economic policy goals (Japan's high economic growth in the late 1960s, labor shortage, robots introduced into factories precisely to fill this gap)—this is industrial policy-driven, not natural cultural flow.
If traditional culture explains "why Japanese people don't find this odd," then contemporary social structures explain "why so many people actually need this." The evidence is quite solid:
The OECD's 2003 survey of "15-year-old adolescents' consciousness" across 25 member countries showed 30% of Japanese adolescents reported "feeling lonely," a figure about three times that of second-place Iceland. During the Lost Decades, terms like otaku, NEET, hikikomori, lonely deaths, and "social phobia nation" gradually became labels closely associated with Japan, precisely reflecting Japanese youth's fear of connecting with society.
More structural is the phenomenon of "muen shakai" (relationless society): this term refers to how, during high growth, many traditional bonds maintaining interpersonal relationships were broken, leaving individuals without connections of community, blood, or locality. Single-person households are increasing in Japan; currently, 16% of men and 7% of women remain unmarried for life, projected to rise to one-third and one-quarter respectively by 2030.
Add to this low birth rates and "low-desire society": among unmarried Japanese aged 18-34, over 40% have no sexual experience, and up to 70% of surveyed men are not in any form of romantic relationship.
Putting this together, the logic chain is: Real-life intimate relationships become increasingly difficult to establish and maintain (economic instability, non-regular employment, competitive education system, relationless urban life) → Emotional needs don't disappear, just lose their original outlet → 2D characters/AI companions fill this gap. This isn't a cultural choice; it's more like a compensatory structural response. Similar discussions exist in otaku studies—early Japanese academic discussions on otaku basically started from perspectives of social risk or social pathology, not cultural tradition.
I tend to break it down like this:
First Layer (Tradition provides "permission," not "drive"): The animistic worldview, lack of strict body-soul dualism, the precedent of Edo-period mechanical dolls—these collectively remove a specific psychological/theological obstacle. In the Judeo-Christian body-soul dualistic tradition, "artificial objects possessing emotions/souls" inherently carries the horror of "usurping the Creator" (the root of the Frankenstein narrative); Japanese culture lacks this hurdle, so when contemporary people encounter AI companions, they don't need to cross the psychological resistance of "this violates nature/divine will." But this explains "why it doesn't feel awkward," not "why so many people actually do it."
Second Layer (Modern social structures provide the real demand and intensity): Loneliness rates, relationlessness, shrinking marriage markets, economic insecurity—these are what turn "developing affection for non-human things" from a culturally "acceptable option" into a large-scale, high-intensity, real emotional dependency driving force. Without this layer of real pressure, animism would at most remain at the ritualistic, restrained level of "sending dolls to shrines," not evolve into the deep daily emotional investment scale seen today with Gatebox virtual companions and AI companions.
So the short answer is: Traditional culture built a bridge (removed the passage obstacle), but modern social structures are the actual current driving people across that bridge. If there were only tradition without contemporary loneliness structures, Japan might still like robots as they like Doraemon, but wouldn't develop such high-intensity, high-dependency AI/2D emotional attachment phenomena.
Extending from the traditional culture side, is mono no aware derived from animism? Focusing solely on this concept makes me feel it's more influenced by Chinese poetry and other arts. What's the actual situation?
This question is very precise—there's actually a layer of simplified history behind "mono no aware." Let me check to confirm details, as the origins and development of this concept itself are quite complex and worth clarifying.
Your intuition is correct, and it's even more ironic than the statement "influenced by Chinese poetry." Let me sort out the origins and development of this concept clearly.
First, clarify a chronological misunderstanding: "Mono no aware" as a systematized, named aesthetic theory comes from the Edo-period scholar Motoori Norinaga. Its proposed background was the rise of the "Kokugaku" (National Learning) intellectual movement in 17th-19th century Japan—a period when Japan, after absorbing large amounts of Chinese culture during the Sui and Tang periods, and with the Tokugawa shogunate implementing a closed-country policy, underwent a reconstruction of its national spirit. In other words, "mono no aware" is not an aesthetic summary naturally grown from animism, but a constructive act with clear political/cultural motives—it was born under specific historical pressures.
By the late Edo period, as Japan itself gradually accumulated strength while China's national power declined, Japan's peculiar mix of inferiority and superiority complexes, and the desire to shed Chinese influence, grew increasingly urgent. Motoori Norinaga's proposal of "mono no aware" was precisely to extract what he considered uniquely "Japanese" from Japanese literature deeply permeated by Confucianism.
His specific argumentative method was to critique the "self-restraint and return to propriety" viewpoint of Chinese literary theory, arguing that Chinese literary theory emphasized realistic criticism. Even if protagonists felt pity or suffering, they had to appear dignified for the sake of "righteousness" or "propriety," which he saw as lacking "truthful depiction of human nature," a "stern exterior but weak interior"表现. He used this as a breakthrough to "exclude Chinese influence," advocating that writing should truthfully present the inner world of people, especially fragile subtleties, with "true feelings" as the standard.
So Motoori Norinaga's operation was: First set up an opposition between "mono no aware = genuine emotional expression" and "Chinese literature = moral repression," then declare mono no aware as uniquely Japanese, untainted by China. This is a typical nationalist identity construction tactic—your intuition sensing "this seems more like Chinese artistic influence" precisely hits the weakest point of this theory.
This detail I find particularly brilliant: Motoori Norinaga not only accepted the methodological influence of Ogyū Sorai but also intentionally followed the "emotion-centered" thought of the Ming dynasty's "Former Seven Masters" (Li Mengyang, He Jingming, etc.). He highly praised He Jingming's view in the preface to "Moonlight Song" that "Tang poets had no love poems" while "our imperial country has many love songs, singing of human nature," using this as evidence for "knowing mono no aware." Furthermore, through Sorai, he was indirectly inspired by the methodology of the "Ancient Prose School" and the "emotion-centered theory" of the Ming's "Latter Seven Masters."
In other words, when Motoori Norinaga argued that "the truthful emotions of Japanese literature are superior to the moral didacticism of Chinese literature," the theoretical framework he used (emotion-centered theory,复古求真) was itself borrowed from Ming dynasty Chinese literary theory. He wasn't discovering a pure Japanese aesthetic in a vacuum, but using one school within Chinese literary theory (the Ming dynasty's Former and Latter Seven Masters, who opposed Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism and advocated for xingling/emotion-centeredness) to attack another school within Chinese literary theory (the Confucian pedagogical tradition)—this is more like an internal theoretical civil war within the Sinographic cultural sphere, not "Japan independently invented mono no aware."
Looking at the texts themselves, in The Tale of Genji (completed in the 11th century, nearly 700 years before Motoori Norinaga), the term "あわれ" (corresponding to the Chinese character "哀") appears as many as 1044 times. Notably, Murasaki Shikibu herself did not theoretically summarize or metaphysically grasp "あわれ." Japanese scholar Ōnishi Yoshinori points out that throughout the work, the appearance of "あわれ" basically doesn't depart from the realm of感性 sighs and pity arising from a sense of "impermanence" (mujō).
"Impermanence" (mujō, Sanskrit anitya, a core Buddhist concept) is a cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy, and the path of Buddhism's entry into Japan was India → China (via Chinese-translated Buddhist scriptures and Sinicized Buddhist thought) → Korean Peninsula → Japan. That is to say, the emotional structure within "mono no aware"—that feeling of melancholy upon seeing cherry blossoms fall or the moon wane—its philosophical底色 is closer to the imported Buddhist view of impermanence, not native animism. Animism (all things have spirit) itself has an emotional基调偏向 "vitality, sacredness, purity" (e.g., evergreen trees, clear springs in shrines) and isn't inherently tinged with "sadness"—the emotional component of "哀" is more likely a compound produced after the Buddhist view of impermanence was superimposed onto animism-style natural sensitivity.
I believe it provided not the emotional本体 of "sadness," but the habit of "paying high attention to subtle changes in nature"—Shinto made Japanese people accustomed to treating subtle natural phenomena (a falling leaf, an insect's chirp) as objects worthy of凝视, even sacred. This habit of "gazing at natural details," combined with the philosophical explanatory framework provided by the Buddhist view of impermanence imported from China, plus the fact that from the earliest kanshi (Chinese-style poetry written by Japanese in Chinese characters), through medieval waka, to modern haiku, "seasonal words" (kigo) have always been essential creative elements—this线索 directly traces the literary载体 of mono no aware back to the source of kanshi, not the purely native waka tradition.
So a more accurate causal chain should be:
Shinto/Animism (provides sensitivity to natural details and the habit of "gazing") + Buddhist View of Impermanence (entered via China, provides the emotional/philosophical底色 of "aware") + Literary Techniques and Theoretical Frameworks from Chinese Poetry (the seasonal word tradition of kanshi, the methodological approach of Ming dynasty emotion-centered literary theory) → Specific literary practices of the Heian period (The Tale of Genji, etc.) → 700 years later, Motoori Norinaga retrospectively theorized, named, and packaged this entire set of things as a "pure Japanese product excluding Chinese influence."
Your suspicion is correct: When this concept is presented in isolation, it easily creates an impression of "this is a uniquely Shinto-esque Eastern spirituality," but when broken down, the proportion of Chinese components (poetic techniques + Buddhist philosophy) in its构成材料 might be greater than that of "Japanese animism"—it's just that the original purpose of inventing this theory was precisely to conceal this fact.