Study: 51% of Europeans, 75% of Chinese Support Replacing Politicians with A.I.; 60% of Americans Oppose It

By B.N. Frank

A 2019 study revealed that 82% of Americans believed Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology was more hurtful than helpful. However, a 2020 study revealed that 66% of parents worldwide and 54% of American parents would adopt a robot “nanny” to help care for their kids. In fact, a significant percentage of these parents also said they would leave their children at home alone with the robot.

Of course, A.I. is only convenient when it does exactly what we want. People don’t want A.I. to discriminate against them, for example, but research has determined that it can and does (see 1, 2, 3). People don’t want A.I. to create shocking online content but that’s happening too. People don’t want to be fooled by A.I. but that’s becoming easier all the time (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). People don’t want to lose their jobs to A.I. but many of already them have and millions more will. People don’t want to be spied on but A.I. is deliberately programmed to be privacy-invasive (see 1, 2, 3).

Nevertheless, some people want A.I. to replace politicians. From CNBC:

More than half of Europeans want to replace lawmakers with AI, study says

Researchers at IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change asked 2,769 people from 11 countries worldwide how they would feel about reducing the number of national parliamentarians in their country and giving those seats to an AI that would have access to their data.

The results, published Thursday, showed that despite AI’s clear and obvious limitations, 51% of Europeans said they were in favor of such a move.

Outside Europe, some 75% of people surveyed in China supported the idea of replacing parliamentarians with AI, while 60% of American respondents opposed it.

LONDON — A study has found that most Europeans would like to see some of their members of parliament replaced by algorithms.

Researchers at IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change asked 2,769 people from 11 countries worldwide how they would feel about reducing the number of national parliamentarians in their country and giving those seats to an AI that would have access to their data.

The results, published Thursday, showed that despite AI’s clear and obvious limitations, 51% of Europeans said they were in favor of such a move.

[…]

Outside Europe, some 75% of people surveyed in China supported the idea of replacing parliamentarians with AI, while 60% of American respondents opposed it.

Opinions also vary dramatically by generation, with younger people found to be significantly more open to the idea.

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