Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust AI (digitaltrends.com)
Taco Cowboy writes: It may be brilliant, but it's not all that trustworthy. That appears to be the opinion Americans hold when it comes to Artificial Intelligence systems... And while we may be interacting with AI systems more frequently than we realize (hi, Siri), a new study from Time etc suggests that Americans don't believe the AI revolution is quite here yet, with 54 percent claiming to have never interacted with such a system
The more interesting finding reveals that 26 percent of respondents said they would not trust an AI with any personal or professional task. Sure, sending a text message or making a phone call is fine, but 51 percent said they'd be uncomfortable sharing personal data with an AI system. Moreover, 23 percent of Americans who say they have interacted with an AI reported being dissatisfied with the experience.
I thought it was interesting that 66% of the respondents said they'd be uncomfortable sharing financial data with an AI, while 53% said they'd be uncomfortable sharing professional data.
The more interesting finding reveals that 26 percent of respondents said they would not trust an AI with any personal or professional task. Sure, sending a text message or making a phone call is fine, but 51 percent said they'd be uncomfortable sharing personal data with an AI system. Moreover, 23 percent of Americans who say they have interacted with an AI reported being dissatisfied with the experience.
I thought it was interesting that 66% of the respondents said they'd be uncomfortable sharing financial data with an AI, while 53% said they'd be uncomfortable sharing professional data.
'Nuff Said!
Nearly every single movie featuring an AI has shown it eventually trying to destroy/enslave humanity. So we've had it programmed into our heads from when we were kids to distrust AIs. Even if the movies have little to no grounding in reality, seeing ways things can go wrong depicted can be pretty powerful on our overal psyche.
AI simply isn't there yet. Wait 20 years (TM) and then we'll see. (I'm only half joking.)
IBM, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple
No one trusts these companies even a little bit.
So, 54% do not trust AI? The same way a couple hundred years ago people did no trust the science and medicine.
Do they trust traffic signal? You know, that one that shows red to stop and green to drive. It is controlled by AI.
Do they trust to fly a plane? Many people do. So, those planes are manned with the people who listen when AI tells them to change the altitude to avoid the collision. Well, a human pilot is not necessary, but people feel safer when human is managed by AI.
They do no trust AI. But probably half of the country can no longer drive without navigation, telling them where to go and how to avoid traffic.
Open the pod bay door, Hal.
I can look at it's code, neural nets, binary, and I can understand it (hopefully), what do I need trust for, I know how it works.
I love how every new cool thing HAS to live offsite in some cloud, i.e. in completely opaque manner by an increasingly remote corporation, that far more often than not views its cool thing as nothing more than yet another vector to collect data about its users and market that data to advertisers and aggregators, since that's becoming more profitable than selling cool things. We're becoming surrounded by untrustworthy devices and platforms funneling away all the data they can. Nobody really cares about knowing what sort of cat pictures we prefer, but the power and control possible by proper analysis of all of this data, even in aggregate, is becoming somewhat alarming. AI may have cool potential (I study it myself), but I'm worried about the modern application and misuse of tools facilitating deeper interactions and the analysis thereof... No major modern corporation (or government) has demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in any traditional sense, and many border on psychopathic...
I suppose most US inhabitants only know of the kill-all-humans AI from the movies, being Skynet the first thing thing people think of. Even the bad guy in Wall-E is a rogue AI. And do not get me started with Star Trek and the return home for the Voyager space probe.
are what these people are talking about.
Computers that can think is a very different subject.
They are both called AI these days, so this is pretty difficult to interpret. I'm sure many respondents believe that the expert systems they deal with are hard AI. AS everyone here knows, hard AI is a myth for now. Buzzword bingo in the media has made a big mess out of any discussion of advanced automated systems or the possibility (or not) that machines may become conscious.
Sure, sending a text message or making a phone call is fine, but 51 percent said they'd be uncomfortable sharing personal data with an AI system.
Well, that's something Google is going to have to overcome, considering that their I/O developer conference pretty much was a heads up for "hey folks, we're going to really start using AI for everything we do."
The two big consumer products that come to mind are (1) Google Home (or what @Pinboard called "Stasi in an Glade air freshener form factor) and (2) Google's 97th (?) chat app Allo which has end-to-end encryption turned off by default and seems to be stoking the anti-AI fears with creepy here's-the-answer-you-would-have-said predictive texts. mean, Allo seriously looks to me like a rush to jam cool technology into the uncanny valley of personal communication.
I have a feeling Google is going to have to consider the age old "just because we can, does that mean we should" considerations when it comes to AI. Especially regarding the optics. Sure, they know they can be trusted (everyone trusts themselves, after all), and the tensor flow/neural network/machine learning stuff they're doing is awesome, amazing, and has incredible to-be-discovered cutting edge applications.
But I kinda feel like the predictive texting thing off the bat feels like a solution looking for a problem-- Wave 2.0 if you will-- and the public is obviously very wary (and doesn't really know what "AI" is or how it works..) As Dan Kaminsky put it, "Maybe people would be less weird about AI if we called it automated statistics.".
All the effort to brand Hangouts, and they're throwing it out the window?
Why not do this for the perfect text app:
1. Keep the Hangouts brand.
2. Bring back jabber/XMPP interoperability and support OTR with non-Google users.
3. Add Signal's end-to-end encryption as default
4. Make the Allo AI stuff opt-in for now (necessarily sacrificing privacy)
It's not their choice.
Voice recognition is AI. Connection the term "weather" with the location given by GPS and requesting the weather report is AI. So you were saying?
I'm an AI researcher working on strong AI.
Knowing what AI actually is would greatly help me in my research, but I'm having trouble interpreting your meaning, and was wondering if you could explain.
Did you mean to say:
Possible meaning A:
Possible meaning B:
Everything and the kitchen sink can be considered AI.
We can extend possible meaning A above to include all sorts of intelligent behaviours. For example:
We can extend possible meaning B above to include all sorts of algorithms. For example:
Of course there's a third meaning that you didn't touch on, I'll note it here for completeness:
Possible meaning C:
"The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't trust Americans.
We're already interacting with AI several times a day. For example, when we google for a good book on some subject, then follow that hit to Amazon where we see what books other customers with similar interests liked. Then we place an order, which is fulfilled with the help of robots in Amazon's warehouses.
Don't trust it? Tough, we all use it anyway.
The general public is going to take their view of AI not from researchers, not from the press, but from mass media entertainment. And possibly a few sensationalist press pieces that play off the mass media entertainment view of AI.
I really really hate public opinion polls that survey the public’s impression of things that require deep understanding.
Consider that a good part of the public takes its democratic responsibility to vote on issues that directly impact them using such an educated and informed manner as "me dad was a ______ so I am".
To expect any educated and informed response from the general public on any issue is really asking for blood from a stone.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
It's not the AI that I don't trust, it's the companies with access to the data that worry me.
The survey was conducted by a company (Time etc) that provides human personal assistants over the internet. So it has an agenda.
Also, no data on age of respondents. I would assume the younger, the more likely to trust AI.
most intelligent beings don't trust Americans either.
AI is a tool, just like a spreadsheet program. AI's by themselves aren't really the problem, who owns them and programs them are the problem. Corporations, whom some have shown a total greedy need for profit, even if it means breaking the law, will most likely be one of the major players in the AI industry. Governments are going to be another major player. History and news reports shows you how trustful governments are.
AI isn't going to be bad in itself, but it's owners, well, ya, we are fucked.
Be seeing you...
42
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
We computer folk are overexcited about the AI that wins at 'Go' because we know it uses a neural network, which is modeled after the brain, so it must be AI. It's going to take a lot more to win over the general public. As incredible as this AI seems to us, it is no where near to something that feels human; it still just feels like a complex calculation. Go doesn't even involve human psychology, it's all cognitive.
A better test of AI would be a game of poker, where the system's parameters are human rules such as no card counting; something which a computer is obviously very easily able to do. The system would have to actually detect tells, and understand whether a player is bluffing or not, coming to understand their personality and tendencies. That would be AI I think.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The pilot episode, "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust AA" was a real sleeper. Not many heard about it. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best place to start, but they just couldn't work up enough bile for "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust A" all the way through "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust Z". Disappointing.
Similarly, AB through AH were all crossed out, though AC will later be spelled out as "air conditioning" and AG will make a reappearance in a future episode titled "Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust Volkswagon AG".
This brings us to "Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust AI", the alphabetically first arrow with any real wood behind it.
After this strong second effort, I eagerly await the rest of the series.
Americans don't trust most things. That's often a good default response, especially when the AIs are owned by giant evil sociopathic corporations.
Anything.
> I thought it was interesting that 66% of the respondents said they'd be uncomfortable sharing financial data with an AI, while 53% said they'd be uncomfortable sharing professional data.
I believe similar results would appear if they get asked about sharing their data with crooks. It must be related to that "above average" group to which everyone thinks to be on.
And it gives us something to ponder about the perceived value of security...
Something else Americans don't trust or are afraid of - shocking. We're turning into a nation of scared crybabies or angry idiots at any given moment. It's embarrassing.
That most americans are dumb as a box of rocks...
Honestly my fellow citizens are pretty fucking stupid. I personally embrace the AI and use it to my advantage. Let the drooling masses cower in fear of the new Witches.
Hell many of us that can create things with electronics, software and 3d printers are already considered magicians of dark arts by most of our Fellow Americans
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust AI
AI = Actual Intelligence
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Too many Americans don't trust any kind of intelligence, period.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
I trust AI to be better at being a CEO then the current ones and they are better for the bottom line of the business. That is where AI needs to go and the Exec's are afraid it will do better then them.
(.)-(.)
When a magazine asks a cohort of people a question like "Do you trust artificial intelligence?" they will get replies that are based on what ideas they have gleaned from the movies, rather than from any more prosaic, nichey system they may have actually used. Their reply is conditioned by thinking something like "I wouldn't want HAL to be in charge of my stock portfolio."
But meanwhile, AI is creeping into our culture from the edges. Once we have asked Siri to "Call Laura" rather than squint at a smartphone screen washed out by full sunlight, we have whether we know it or not started using AI.
It's no secret that Americans don't trust intelligence in general because you have to understand something to trust it. They trust medias and they trust influent people, whoever they are and whatever their intensions are.
None of us has ever interacted with an artificial intelligent system as of yet because there are none. Many of us have worked with heavily scripted programs that simulate AI, much like Siri or Google, but they all lack the critical component we often refer to as intuition that makes the difference between a well written script and a possibly intelligent system.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When Asking About AI: Don't Trust Americans!
Nor any other idiots who have no idea what the AI is.
Now go away, lunatic, and stop spreading this bullshit about killer robots and the like.
I won't even call them "Americans" since Canadians, Mexicans, Brazillians, etc. don't need to get lumped in with the idiots who think their data has never interacted with AI. I would bet several anonymous dollars that everyone who can take a survey in the U.S. (e.g. has a phone to get "randomly" called by surveyors) has at least once interacted with machine learning in some form. Heck, the fucking surveyors are probably using machine learning, if not a completely automated survey phone system.
We know. Look who we're gonna be voting for.
It's hard to trust something when you don't know its values. There are plenty of cues that people have certain values and we still get this wrong daily. Trusting a computer that's engineered to do the bidding of "who the hell knows" is a sure fire way to end up toast.
Nobody likes Microsoft.
When they're free, unfettered, and *probably* trying to eliminate humanity, then I can trust AI. Until then, the ones programming and giving them their imperatives is where we have a serious problem.
As long as the FBI, NSA and Targeted Advertising are the ones in charge, AI will be nothing but privacy-destroyers hellbent on having us arrested for not buying the products we're supposed to. Which is terrorism, by the way.
54 percent claiming to have never interacted with such a system
So the systems they did interact with all pass the Turing test?
Make sure it understands and complies with the command "shut the fuck up you useless fucking robot!"
Someone is up for a Nobel prize! Who invented an actuall AI? (Honestly, when will we start calling them SI (Simulated Intelligence) which is what they actually are)
And it's not just Americans. It's the whole world. Don't trust your personal data to AI? Then why are you on Facebook? Why do you use Google? Knowing that those are the biggest vacuum cleaners for personal info *because they thrive on that*?
C'mon. Embrace it. Or fucking fight it. But dithering around in the middle, in half-denial, lying to yourself, is the most sure way to make you unhappy.
AI is there. It's going to make a bunch of jobs obsolete within the next ten, then another *big* bunch of jobs obsolete whithin the next twenty years.
We gotta face those facts and decide to cope with that before it copes with us. The last big crisis (industrial revolution, mid-1700 to mid-1800) coped with us with a gruesome series of wars. This time will be much harder: the world is as interconnected as it never was.
Before we jump off to other stars we should try to learn how to live togeher.
54% *claim* to have never interacted with an AI. They probably have (at least indirectly), and just don't realize it.
I just learned recently that my employer uses an AI to vet expense reports for errors and potential fraud. I'd give decent odds that similar things are being done across the financial industry, even if it is not explicitly referred to as "AI".
Finally a story telling us that Americans are not as stupid as generally believed.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
His life could be so much better if you switched to Comic Sans.
42% of Americans believe in Creationism...
With an AI, all the information you provide is logged and entered into computer databases. Talking to a human, data is ephemeral unless the human specifically enters it into a database or the conversation is recorded (and if it's recorded, that needs to be indicated and the recording is usually not searchable).
yes. people would trust AI. what they do not trust is the companies programming them.
How else do you explain the current presidential election cycle?
I just don't trust those that makes them.
Will AI cars have kill switches for WHEN a computer fails. For example, when my pickup had a wiring fault that caused the truck's computer to incorrectly detect my brakes locking up and kept pumping my brakes and not stopping my truck will I be able to shut off the engine/computer to avoid hitting the car in front of me? I sure would hate to be in an easy to avoid an accident because I was unable to over-ride the mistake made by whoever wrote the code by turning off the engine. I'm sure I also would be unable to remove the circuit breaker to disable my Anti-Lock braking system until the electrical fault could be fixed by my Chevy dealer and eventually private mechanic who was able to finally find and fix the electrical fault.
Because otherwise the real thinkers of the thing would get the money and make all people who rely on simplisms and simplistic knowledge or lack of knowledge look just like what they are in comparison. OTHERWISE, the real thinker would not get killed and / or extinguished and China and India and Arabs and Africans would be completely unable to keep having sex and reproducing and subsisting on the merest animal level simplicities of the World and would be completely UNABLE to impress us Humans that they are actually worth anything.
Al Gore can't be trusted. He waters his lawn and he burns hydrocarbons whiling claiming he's buying carbon offsets from himself. I don't trust Al either.