″ A major consideration is that individuals’ explicit statements of their reasons for their beliefs and attitudes may simply reflect post hoc rationalizations or ways of making sense of their beliefs and attitudes, as respondents may be unaware of the true reasons for their responses.”
I suspect that a major factor is simply: “are people like me concerned about AI?”/”what do people like me believe?”
This to me points out the issue that AI risk communication is largely done by nerdy white men (sorry guys—I’m one of those too) and we should diversify the messengers.
I think more research into whether public attitudes towards AI might be influenced by the composition of the messengers would be interesting. It would be relatively straightforward to run an experiment assessing whether people’s attitudes differ in response to different messengers.
That said, the hypothesis (the AI risk communication being largely done by nerdy white men influences attitudes via public perceptions of whether ‘people like me’ are concerned about AI) seems to conflict with the available evidence. Both our previous surveys in this series (as well as this one) found no significant gender differences of this kind. Indeed, we found that women were more supportive of a pause on AI, more supportive of regulation, more inclined towards expecting harm from AI than men. Of course, future research attitudes towards more narrow attitudes regarding AI risk could reveal other differences.
″ A major consideration is that individuals’ explicit statements of their reasons for their beliefs and attitudes may simply reflect post hoc rationalizations or ways of making sense of their beliefs and attitudes, as respondents may be unaware of the true reasons for their responses.”
I suspect that a major factor is simply: “are people like me concerned about AI?”/”what do people like me believe?”
This to me points out the issue that AI risk communication is largely done by nerdy white men (sorry guys—I’m one of those too) and we should diversify the messengers.
Thanks for the comment!
I think more research into whether public attitudes towards AI might be influenced by the composition of the messengers would be interesting. It would be relatively straightforward to run an experiment assessing whether people’s attitudes differ in response to different messengers.
That said, the hypothesis (the AI risk communication being largely done by nerdy white men influences attitudes via public perceptions of whether ‘people like me’ are concerned about AI) seems to conflict with the available evidence. Both our previous surveys in this series (as well as this one) found no significant gender differences of this kind. Indeed, we found that women were more supportive of a pause on AI, more supportive of regulation, more inclined towards expecting harm from AI than men. Of course, future research attitudes towards more narrow attitudes regarding AI risk could reveal other differences.
Good point, thanks David