A study of US attitudes towards AI has revealed that men are more likely to use AI than women, and that concerns about its potential for causing harm are widespread.
Rutgers University recent released a report on TikTok, but this report on AI trends comes from its National AI Opinion Monitor, which analyzed 4,767 responses from participants ages 18 and older living in the US to get a sense of how the public feels about the quickly-evolving technology.
It broke down data into categories including age, education level, and gender, giving insights into levels of knowledge around AI, whether and how it is being used, and whether there is an appetite for it.
Awareness Increasing
The report shows that the majority (90%) of participants knew about AI, but there is a distinct drop off when the team drilled down for details. Half recognized the term “generative AI,” and only 12% are aware of “large language models,” the tech behind AI.
Despite this, the report shows that engagement is increasing, especially among “younger, male, better-educated, and higher-income Americans” who are both more likely to use AI and are more interested in its possibilities.
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Gender, Education and Age Differences
While there was little difference between the percentage of women and men who knew about AI in general terms, this widened when it came to specifics. Among female participants, 47% knew about generative AI as compared to 55% of the men.
There was also a gender divide when it came to interest in AI. Men were more likely to be highly engaged, with 44% very or extremely interested, compared to 27% of women. And this translated to a gulf in usage. Generative AI platforms were used by 60% of men compared to 47% of women.
The data was also broken down by education level. Knowledge of what a LLM is sat at 24% of participants with a graduate degree and at 23% of those earning $100K and over. This was far higher than people in the brackets of a lower-level of education and lower earnings.
Age is also a factor. Older Americans were the least aware group of those technologies. The report reveals that only 40% of those over 65 knew about generative AI and 6% about large language models.
Which AI Tools Are People Using?
As well as asking about the technology at a surface level, the researchers delved into which AI tools participants are aware of. It will come of little surprise that OpenAI’s ChatGPT topped the list at 63%. However, only 37% have actually used it. The report broke this usage down and revealed that 5% used ChatGPT multiple times a day, 4% daily, 8% multiple times a week, 5% weekly, 5% monthly, and 11% only once or twice ever.
Coming in second place was Google’s Gemini with 50% of participants naming it while the third place slot was taken by Microsoft’s Copilot at 39%.
The report also revealed what people are using AI for, with over a third of the users accessing AI platforms to seek information about health. However, more said that they came across AI-generated text and search result summaries – with some respondents saying that they encountered these “at least once a day.”
Interestingly, most users (86%) find AI summaries to be helpful. This is despite reports of problems. Apple has been under the spotlight after its Apple Intelligence AI tools created wildly inaccurate news summaries.
The report also suggests that people are getting used to seeing AI-generated content with more than 25% sharing that they see AI-generated images or videos daily.
Concerns Are Widespread
Despite the interest in AI, the report gave some stark insights into exactly how concerned people are about its potential impacts. As policymakers continue to wrangle with how to police AI advances, respondents said they were concerned about the impact AI could have on privacy and safety. Specifically, 41% of respondents believe that AI does more harm than good in protecting personal information.
The data reveals that they are particularly concerned about AI’s influence on politics (58%) and news media (53%), which the researchers suggests picks up on “fears of misinformation and manipulation during the 2024 election cycle.”
This mistrust was also reflected in the tasks that respondents said that they would be happy for AI to perform. Nearly half supported the idea of AI performing household chores, but 57% didn’t like the idea of AI performing surgery on them while 53% were against the idea of autonomous vehicles – a stat Elon Musk might well take issue with.
