The public’s attitude toward AI remains uncertain, threatening AI adoption and use. Understanding what is driving the public’s hesitance can help us craft solutions.
Credit: insta_photos / Shutterstock
When the first automobiles started making their way across our muddy, rutted roads, the public’s reaction was decidedly mixed. One car inventor remembers being called “crazy” for thinking his “fool contraption…will ever displace the horse.” And in cities, pedestrians bristled, and outright refused to yield the streets, angered by the idea that they be “forced to submit to the tyranny of the automobilist.”
These reactions are not so different to the reception of artificial intelligence today. Some struggle to imagine how AI will displace existing technology. And people worry that AI might change how we live and work, imposing a technological tyranny on us all.
It took decades before the general public came to embrace a car-centric world. AI technology is developing much quicker and needs far less infrastructure to succeed. Can public acceptance …