Reduced AI Acceptance After the Generative AI Boom: Evidence From a Two-Wave Survey Study
This research addresses the problem of misalignment between AI deployment and public preferences, highlighting social inequalities, and is incremental as it builds on existing survey-based studies of AI acceptance.
The study examined shifts in public attitudes toward AI before and after the launch of ChatGPT, finding that the generative AI boom significantly reduced public acceptance of AI and increased demand for human oversight, with the proportion finding AI 'not acceptable at all' rising from 23% to 30%.
The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies has led many organizations to integrate AI into their products and services, often without considering user preferences. Yet, public attitudes toward AI use, especially in impactful decision-making scenarios, are underexplored. Using a large-scale two-wave survey study (n_wave1=1514, n_wave2=1488) representative of the Swiss population, we examine shifts in public attitudes toward AI before and after the launch of ChatGPT. We find that the GenAI boom is significantly associated with reduced public acceptance of AI (see Figure 1) and increased demand for human oversight in various decision-making contexts. The proportion of respondents finding AI "not acceptable at all" increased from 23% to 30%, while support for human-only decision-making rose from 18% to 26%. These shifts have amplified existing social inequalities in terms of widened educational, linguistic, and gender gaps post-boom. Our findings challenge industry assumptions about public readiness for AI deployment and highlight the critical importance of aligning technological development with evolving public preferences.