Etzioni on AI: Who disagrees with you about AI? Here’s what the research shows

Attitudes toward AI vary by country, gender, profession, age, and politics. A few of those posts are surprising. This article is full of statistics. Read it in the comments, or look at the bar graph below for a quick overview.

Let’s start with geography, the broadest classification of all. Ask Chinese people if they trust AI and, Edelman finds, nearly nine out of 10 say yes; ask Americans and about a third do. A similar chasm appears, in the Stanford AI Index, on the big question of whether AI’s benefits outweigh its shortcomings, where a majority of Chinese say it’s a good thing and a majority of Americans are skeptical.

Here is a possible explanation. When the economy is young and growing rapidly, AI reads like a ladder to climb; when they are mature, it is read as a threat to jobs and so on. Trust in AI appears to track two things, trust in institutions and expectations of personal gain, and both are higher in many Asian countries than in the conservative West.

In the US, men are almost twice as likely as women to expect AI to be good for society, Pew finds, and the gap is still wide between the researchers who build it. The persuasive explanation, that women use tools less, no longer holds: in the last two years women have even attracted men to use chatbots, however they trust them less. Women may also say that AI is moving too fast.

Adults under the age of 50 access ChatGPT at twice the rate of their elders, Pew reports, yet those under the age of 30 are less convinced that it will be socially awkward. Here, familiarity causes discomfort, and for good reason: young people are not only the heaviest users but also the most exposed. AI may be at the forefront of entry-level jobs they’re trying to find, and they’re feeling it, as Gen Z is more likely than any older group to expect it to reduce their job opportunities, according to the Harris Poll.

Among AI researchers surveyed, most expect the technology to help the world in the next two decades, Pew research shows; in the community, less than one in five do. Some of that is knowledge, because experts understand what systems can and cannot do and are less afraid of bad situations.

Of course, the people who design AI have their jobs and fortunes riding on its success, while the people who answer the phones or drive trucks see mostly their own threat. The same pattern applies across industries, from tech workers who embrace AI in the workplace to logistics workers who oppose it. Like Miles’ rule, where you stand depends on where you sit.

The final split is one that has been moving in recent years, and it’s moving fast. Two years ago Republicans were AI skeptics; Democrats have since seized them and passed them. Today, just over half of Republicans now trust Washington to regulate AI; about a third of Democrats do, Pew finds.

AI companies are now more popular on the right than on the left, the Harris Poll shows. Democrats are cooling off from the companies they once enjoyed, while Republicans are warming to the rise of their now champion side. That said, on both sides many people worry that the regulation will do too little rather than too much; what they parted with was the one he hoped would rein.

Despite some lofty rhetoric, there is no single verdict on AI. Hope comes from those who stand to gain the most, from emerging economies and from within the labs; doubt comes from those who lose the most or fear the most. Whatever AI turns out to be, it’s being built by people who love it, for a non-existent community.