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.
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