Around one in five people in the US believe that artificial intelligence is already sentient, while around 30 per cent think that artificial general intelligences (AGIs) capable of performing any task a human can are already in existence. Both beliefs are false, suggesting that the general public has a shaky grasp of the current state of AI 鈥� but does it matter?
at the Sentience Institute in New York and his colleagues asked a nationally representative sample of 3500 people in the US their perceptions of AI and its sentience. The surveys, carried out in three waves between 2021 and 2023, asked questions like 鈥淒o you think any robots/AIs that currently exist are sentient?鈥� and whether it could ever be possible for that technology to reach sentience.
鈥淲e wanted to collect data early to understand how public opinion might shape the future trajectory of AI technologies,鈥� says Anthis.
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The findings of the survey were surprising, he says. In 2021, around 18 per cent of respondents said they thought AI or robot systems already in existence were sentient 鈥� a number that increased to 20 per cent in 2023, when there were two survey waves. One in 10 people asked in 2023 thought ChatGPT, which launched at the end of 2022, was sentient.
鈥淚 think we perceive mind very readily in computers,鈥� says Anthis. 鈥淲e see them as social actors.鈥� He also says that some of the belief in AI sentience is down to big tech companies selling their products as imbued with more abilities than the underlying technology may suggest they have. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of hype in this space,鈥� he says. 鈥淎s companies have started building their brands around things like AGI, they have a real incentive to talk about how powerful their systems are.鈥�
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of research showing that when somebody has a financial interest in something happening, they are more likely to think it will happen,鈥� says at the University of Oxford. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not even that they might be misleading the public or lying. It鈥檚 simply that optimism bias is a common problem for humans.鈥�
Journalists should also take some of the blame, says at King鈥檚 College London. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 helped by the kind of media coverage we saw around large language models, with overexcited and panicked reports about existential threats from superintelligence.鈥�
Anthis worries that the incorrect belief that AI has a mind, encouraged by the anthropomorphising of AI systems by their makers and the media, is shaping our perception of their abilities. There is a risk that if people believe AI is sentient, they will put more faith than they ought to in its judgements 鈥� a concern when AI is being considered for use in government and policing.
One way to avoid this trap is to recast our thinking, says Anthis. 鈥淚 think people have hyperfocused on the term 鈥榓rtificial intelligence鈥�,鈥� he says, pointing out it was little more than a good branding exercise when the term was first coined in the 1950s. People are often impressed at how AI models perform on human IQ tests or standardised exams. 鈥淏ut those are very often the wrong way of thinking of these models,鈥� he says 鈥� because the AIs are simply regurgitating answers found in their vast training data, rather than actually 鈥渒nowing鈥� anything.
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