New polling from Monmouth University found that Americans are very concerned about the future of artificial intelligence. For starters, 55% think AI will one day pose a risk to the human race.
Respondents also had doubts about its ability to improve quality of life. Only 9% percent of respondents thought developing AI would do more good than harm to society, 41% thought it would do more harm than good, and 46% thought the advantages and disadvantages would break even.
“One of the things that we see that that concern has gone up about is just like, ‘Will it take over humanity?’” Monmouth University Polling Director Patrick Murray said. “Now, there’s a sense there that we’ve gotten to the point where it’s not just going to replace jobs. But we’ve seen these movies where basically robots take over the world and I think people are starting to fear that.”
As for jobs, 73% said having machines that can think for themselves will hurt employment and the economy while 19% said it would help. The only type of work that received strong support for AI driven machines: risky jobs like coal mining.
“AI makes a lot of sense, which is, you know, really dangerous jobs, like coal mining or something like that, where we send a robot down, and they’ll make the decisions about how to mine the coal rather than send the person down there,” Murray said.
But when it came to work that impacts our health and safety, like self driving delivery trucks, robotic nurses, safety operators and military drone decision making, respondents said they want that human touch.
“So there’s a sense that the closer that you get to somebody, where there could be some significant lasting damage made to a person is that they want another human being there, even with a human beings’, you know, faults and everything else,” Murray said.
This poll could have very different results ten years from now because the concern is generational. Concern about AI’s threats to human existence decreased with age, from 61% of those 55 and older, to 46% of people aged 18 to 34.
“They’re the ones that are more to say, instead of just saying, ‘You know that that self-driving car crashed, so therefore let’s forget about self driving cars,’ which is what you hear from a lot in the older generation, they say, ‘That’s a technology that we probably can work on. It’s just not ready yet,’” Murray said.
