What is it about?
This study looks at how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) affects how much Americans trust their social institutions including the government, companies, police, and hospitals. The findings show that when these institutions use AI tools, people tend to trust them less. This loss of trust is particularly significant for police precincts and is generally greater than the loss of trust caused by the use of other measured technologies.
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Why is it important?
The fact that using AI leads to such large decreases in trust (up to 18%) for social institutions is worrying for two reasons. First, if we are indeed in a social trust crisis, the use of AI systems by social institutions might exacerbate this. The second reason it is worrying is because AI has great potential to support human decision-making. There is a risk that AI tools will become politicized, possibly hindering their use in valuable domains.
Perspectives
This research tells a fairly straightforward story of Americans' anxieties about a revolutionary new technology. While it is not unusual for the public to be distrustful of new technologies, and technology in general, organizational leadership and stakeholders should be considerate of these anxieties when using AI tools.
Andrew Collins
Stony Brook University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Social Trust in American Institutions, Journal of Social Computing, September 2023, Tsinghua University Press,
DOI: 10.23919/jsc.2023.0022.
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