How do people feel about AI?

Project background

Artificial intelligence technology and its widespread use in many aspects of daily life is developing at a rapid pace. It is therefore crucial to understand how people currently experience the many applications of AI, including people’s general awareness of these technologies, how they perceive the benefits and concerns, and whether their attitudes differ across key demographic factors. To effectively inform the design of policy responses, it is also important to understand people’s views on how these technologies should be governed and regulated.

Project aims

In late 2022 the Ada Lovelace Institute and The Alan Turing Institute conducted a nationally representative survey of over 4,000 members of the British public, to understand their awareness of, experience with and attitudes towards different uses of artificial intelligence, including views and expectations on how these technologies should be regulated and governed.

Understanding people’s perspectives on data and AI is a key component in ensuring these technologies are developed to align with societal values, and are able to address societal needs. We hope this research will help AI companies and policymakers to understand and address the public’s diverse opinions and attitudes towards AI, so that technology developed in the future works better, for everyone.

This project was made possible by a grant from The Alan Turing Institute and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with contributions from Kantar in designing the survey and collecting the data, and substantial input from LSE’s Methodology Department (Professor Patrick Sturgis, Katya Kostadintcheva and Oriol Bosch-Jover).