AI's hopes and fears: This is a survey of 2,000 people's AI lives

Original source: Produced by Fenghuang Technology "AI Outpost"

Comprehensive arrangement｜Xiao Yu

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI‌

Fenghuang.com Science and Technology News "AI Outpost" Beijing time on June 27th, the popularity of ChatGPT seems to have brought the world into the era of artificial intelligence (AI). AI will change the world, but the problem is, no one knows exactly how it will change the world, for better or for worse.

Over the past year, rapid advances in generative AI have led some to see opportunities to push the limits of creativity, automate rote tasks, and discover new ways to learn and teach. **However, others argue that the technology could disrupt people's lives in more destructive ways: generating misinformation, destroying or reducing jobs, and even posing a serious threat to people's safety if left unchecked. **

Figure | AI will destroy humans?

Right now, tech leaders, lawmakers and researchers are debating how to respond to the emerging technology. Some in the industry, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, want the AI giants to take the lead in guiding regulation, shifting the focus to future threats, including "extinction risk." **Others, such as EU politicians, are more concerned with the immediate dangers and strictly prohibit dangerous use cases. Skeptics argue that restrictions also prevent positive applications of AI. Meanwhile, many young artists just want a guarantee that they won't be replaced by machines. **

In order to find out what people really think about AI and their expectations for AI, the American technology media The Verge, in conjunction with the analysis and research team of Vox Media and The Circus, a research and consulting company, conducted a survey of more than 2,000 American adults to understand their Thoughts, feelings and fears about AI. It turns out that many people are not yet using this new, uncertain, and exciting technology, that many are terrified by its potential, and that many still have high hopes for its future uses.

**Have you ever used AI? **

AI is suddenly everywhere. Image generators and large language models became top priorities for new startups, driving features in some popular apps. However, despite all the news coverage about AI, people's use of these new tools is still quite limited, at least in the case of dedicated AI products.

The survey shows that the use of AI tools is clearly skewed towards younger users, with millennials (people born in the 1980s and 1990s) and Generation Z (people born between 1995 and 2009) being the main force in using AI tools. Most people have heard of ChatGPT, but Microsoft Bing and Google Bud are not as well known. **57% of the respondents said they have used or heard of ChatGPT. This compares to 46 percent for Microsoft Bing and 38 percent for Google Budd. **

Figure｜57% of people have heard or used ChatGPT

Overall, only one-third of respondents had used AI tools, and most were unaware of the companies and startups behind the tools. While there are many up-and-comers in AI, such as Stability AI and Midjourney, the field is still dominated by big tech companies. **OpenAI is a major exception, perhaps a large company given its valuation ($27 billion to $29 billion) and its deal with Microsoft. **

** Will AI make a big difference? **

Although people have limited use of AI tools so far, their expectations for the technology's impact on the world are high, surpassing electric vehicles, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and non-human Fungible Token (NFT).

Figure｜Over seven adults believe that AI will have a major impact on society

According to the survey, nearly three-quarters (74%) of the respondents believe that AI will have a significant or moderate impact on society, exceeding 69% of electric vehicles, 60% of VR, 52% of AR and 34% of NFT .

Main use of AI

The main driver of this recent AI boom is generative AI: it can generate text, assist with brainstorming, edit text, and create images, audio, and video. Currently,** these tools are rapidly being integrated into professional systems, such as Photoshop can reimagine a part of an image, but they usually require quite a bit of guidance for most users to use these tools correctly. **

According to the survey, search, brainstorming and artistic creation are the main uses of AI at present. Among those who use AI tools, creative experimentation is the most common use. People use AI to compose music and videos, create stories, and edit photos. More specialized applications such as programming are less common. On top of that, people have been using AI systems to answer questions, which means that chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bud may replace search engines, for better or worse.

Figure｜Main uses of AI

One finding in particular is that AI is expanding people's creative capabilities. In every category we surveyed, people who have used AI said they used these AI tools to create things they wouldn't otherwise be able to create, and artwork was the most popular category in these creative fields. This finding makes sense considering that AI image generators are much more advanced than audio or video production tools.

**Most people believe that AI has made their jobs better. For example, in the creation of artworks, 61% of the respondents believed that AI made their works better; 60% of the respondents said that AI made their emails better. **

AI Plagiarism

AI also has a worrying side. AI image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are good examples. These systems are trained using vast amounts of data scraped from the web, often without the consent of the creators of the original data. The practice has sparked intense ethical debate and its legality has been challenged by numerous lawsuits. These controversies are quickly spreading to other generative mediums, such as AI song generation.

Figure｜Over seven adults believe that AI plagiarism should be compensated

The survey showed mixed feelings about how to deal with these ethical controversies. For example, 70% of respondents believe that top artists should be compensated when AI tools copy their style, but most also don't want those AI capabilities to be limited. 44% said they had asked an AI to copy an artist's style. **

**Should AI be regulated? **

It’s not just tech leaders who want AI tools to develop in a controlled manner, more than three-quarters (76%) of respondents also believe that laws and regulations need to be developed for the development of AI.

Figure｜76% believe that laws and regulations should be formulated for AI development

According to the survey, 76% of the respondents said that the training of AI models needs to use fact-checked data sets. 78% believe that AI-generated digital content should be clearly labeled as "AI-generated". 76% believe that deepfake video or audio should be considered illegal without the consent of a real person.

The future of AI: good and bad

Opinions are clearly ambivalent about the future of AI, but lean slightly toward pessimism. When predicting AI’s impact on society, respondents cited a variety of dangers, from job losses (63%) to privacy threats (68%) to government and corporate abuse (67%). **Concern about these dangers outweighs potential positive applications of AI, such as new medical treatments (51%) and economic empowerment (51%). When asked about AI's potential impact on personal and professional lives, as well as society, there was about as much concern as excitement. For the most part, they were both excited and worried. **

The data shows that 21% of people are excited about the impact of AI on society, 29% feel anxious, 32% are both excited and anxious, and 18% are neither excited nor anxious.

Figure｜32% of people are both excited and anxious about AI

Surprisingly, a considerable number of people also think that some of the bolder AI predictions are justified. For example, 56 percent of respondents believe that “humans will develop emotional relationships with AI.” Thirty-five percent said they would do so if they felt lonely.

Many in the AI industry are currently warning of the "existential risk" AI systems pose, a controversial notion that superintelligent AI could wipe out humanity. The survey found that many people agree with this point. ** 38% of respondents agreed with the statement that AI will destroy human civilization, perhaps this is why more people are worried. **

Figure｜51% of people think that AI will have feelings

Faced with the uncertainty of AI, people are open to what might happen in the future. About half of U.S. adults expect sentient AI to emerge sometime in the future. Nearly two-thirds have no problem with companies trying to develop such AI. Fenghuang Technology "AI Frontier" will continue to pay attention to this.