One in five Americans believe AI is conscious, study reveals

A study conducted on a group of 3,500 representative respondents showed that one in five Americans is convinced that artificial intelligence possesses consciousness. The detailed results of the study were published on the arXiv website, a platform used for publishing scientific articles before their peer review.

The study was conducted by Jacy Reese Anthis from the Sentience Institute in New York, working with a team of scientists. They surveyed a representative sample of 3,500 people in the USA, asking about their perceptions of AI and its consciousness. In three survey waves conducted between 2021 and 2023, questions such as "Do you think any currently existing robots/AI are conscious?" and "Will it ever be possible for this technology to achieve consciousness?" were asked.

The authors of the study explain that their goal was to obtain information about the level of public knowledge about artificial intelligence to better understand how public opinion may influence the development of AI in the future.

In 2021, about 18% of respondents believed that existing AI systems or robots are already conscious. This number rose to 20% in 2023, when two more waves of the study were conducted. Moreover, 30% of Americans believe that artificial intelligence already exists capable of performing any task typically done by a human. Surprisingly, one in ten people asked in 2023 believed that ChatGPT, launched at the end of 2022, is conscious.

Scientists emphasise that the technologies currently referred to as "artificial intelligence" are quite simple, and it cannot be said that AI possesses consciousness. The fact that society believes otherwise is very troubling because it might mean that people could trust "opinions issued by AI" more than opinions from humans.

Jacy Reese Anthis expresses concern that society has too easily fallen for the marketing ploy used by tech companies, which involves exaggerating the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

- Big tech companies are selling their products as having greater abilities than the underlying technology suggests. I think people have focused too much on the term ‘artificial intelligence’ – said Anthis, quoted by "New Scientist". The scientist reminded that the term "artificial intelligence" was coined in the 1950s.

- People are often impressed by how AI models perform on IQ tests or standardised exams for humans. But that’s often a very bad way of thinking about these models, because AI is simply repeating answers found in its huge database, on which it was trained, instead of actually ‘knowing’ anything – said Anthis.

Scientists also point out the role of the media in shaping public perception of AI.

- The type of media coverage we've seen around large language models does not help with this, with overly excited and panic-stricken reports about existential threats from superintelligence – said Kate Devlin from King’s College London, quoted by New Scientist.