When Arnold Schwarzenegger said "I'll be back" in The Terminator, he probably didn't realize the film would keep coming back in discussions about robots and artificial intelligence. Yet 35 years after Schwarzenegger portrayed a cyborg assassin from an AI-dominated future, much of Western discourse on robots is repeating a Terminator-like scenario: panic that robots will take our jobs, and that AI will take over the world, Skynet-style. Western culture has had a long history of individualism, warlike use of technology, Christian apocalyptic thinking and a strong binary between body and soul. These elements might explain the West's obsession with the technological apocalypse and its opposite: techno-utopianism. In Asia, it's now common to explain China's dramatic rise as a leader in AI and robotics as a consequence of state support from the world's largest economy.