AI Has a PR Problem

Today on the AI Daily Brief, why AI has a PR problem. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Alright, friends. Quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, Blitsy, Robo, and Robots and Pencils. To get an ad free version of the show, go to patreon.com/aidailybrief, or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. And if you are interested in sponsoring the show, send us a note at sponsors@aidailybrief.ai. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief. Today, we are talking about a subject which I'm sure will be not a surprise at all to any of you. We are talking about AI's PR problem. There are a number of things going on and stories from the last couple of weeks, which all point in a very similar direction. So today, we're going to talk about those stories, what I think is at the root of these challenges, and some very first nascent thoughts on what we can do about it. Let's talk first about this Edelman study. Coursera founder Andrew Ng wrote, separate reports by the publicity firm Edelman and Pew Research show that Americans, and more broadly large parts of Europe and the Western world, do not trust AI and are not excited about it. Despite the AI community's optimism about the tremendous benefits AI will bring, we should take this seriously and not dismiss it. The public's concerns about AI can be a significant drag on progress, and we can do a lot to address them. According to Edelman's survey, in The US, 49% of people reject the growing use of AI and 17% embrace it. In China, 10% reject it and 54% embrace it. Pew's data also shows many other nations much more enthusiastic than The US about AI adoption. Positive sentiment towards AI is a huge national advantage. On the other hand, widespread distrust of AI means individuals will be slow to adopt it, valuable projects that need societal support will be stymied, and populist anger against AI raises the risk that laws will be passed that hamper AI development. So let's talk about this trust study. Edelman publishes their trust barometer every year. And this year, surprise surprise, the big theme was AI and kind of frankly AI consternation of the type that Andrew was just talking about. This survey was conducted very recently, October 17 to the twenty seventh. And boy, is this all telling a single story. Edelman's headlines include one, that globally rejection for AI outweighs enthusiasm with US respondents more than twice as likely to say they reject the growing use of AI than they are to embrace it. Even beyond AI, enthusiasm for innovation is not guaranteed. Trust in AI generally lags behind trust in technology. Now at the risk of being overly reductive, there is a very clear East West divide here. Although, frankly, probably a better way to put …