What is it about?
Fears about artificial intelligence (AI) can be a psychological barrier to accepting beneficial technologies. In a study of 10,000 participants across 20 countries, we found that these fears are not the same everywhere. Despite large cultural differences, we found a unified psychological model that can potentially explain the fear of AI at a global scale: Fears of AI in a given role are associated with the mismatch between psychological traits people deem necessary for the role and the perceived potential of AI to possess these traits.
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Why is it important?
Our findings emphasize the need to consider both the supply and demand sides of psychological traits to predict cross-domain, cross-nation public reactions to AI. It is not just about how people perceive AI, but also about what they want AI to do. These insights can help develop best practices for designing and communicating about AI in a principled yet culturally sensitive way.
Perspectives
AI is evolving so rapidly that it is creating new cultural shifts that established cultural frameworks cannot fully explain. For instance, our research found no clear link between fear of AI and well-known cultural factors such as individualism or how “tight” or “loose” a society is with its rules. Exploring this “cultural psychology of AI” could open up exciting new directions for future research.
Mengchen Dong
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Fears about artificial intelligence across 20 countries and six domains of application., American Psychologist, December 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/amp0001454.
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