By the Numbers: Is AI the Revolution Nobody Wants?

By the Numbers is LBB’s regular new column, in which Adam will explore the data behind the biggest industry trends, and examine how closely hype aligns with reality. 

“Technology feels like it’s happening to people rather than for them”. 

That line, originally published in Accenture’s 2024 Life Trends report, has stuck with me. It feels like a nail-on-head summation of a slow change that’s happened in our relationship with tech. Technology used to be a synonym for progress, but that connection has been cut over the course of hollow hype cycles; from the metaverse to NFTs. 

Although that quote wasn’t written specifically about AI, it’s hard not to put in that context. For anyone working in a creative role, thinking about the future is a bit like sitting in the back seat of an AI-powered driverless car, one that parked up alongside us and instructed us to “get in, loser”. 

Of course, I would say that. I’m a writer. My relationship with AI is like my relationship with a grizzly bear. Sure, I’m curious; but I know that if it gets too close it’s going to eat me. Yet even with my personal interest declared, survey data tells a nuanced story about public opinion towards the technology. Specifically, it’s about the gap between our industry’s excitement for AI, and the weariness and scepticism of a public we’re expecting to buy into it.

Last month, YouGov USA updated a regular tracker the polling giant has put together measuring public opinion on AI. Happily for the optimistic futurists, 31% of respondents already agree that the technology will make our lives easier, compared to just 13% of sceptics who reckon it’s going to make life more challenging. 

So AI is winning the PR battle, then? Not quite. Only 27% of US adults think that AI is going to have “a positive impact on society”, compared to 42% who believe the opposite. And 27% (quite possibly the same 27% as above) think AI will improve the economy, in contrast to 32% who think the evolving technology will worsen it. 

Somewhere between those numbers, there’s a story to tell. Whilst there’s something approaching a consensus that AI is going to make life more convenient, there’s already a sharp divide over whether that convenience is going to be a good thing. Ostensibly, this makes no sense. Could it really be that people have had enough of convenience? 

To try and find out, I dug up Ipsos Mori’s huge Global Views on AI report, published last year. There, a staggeringly wide gap between the global east and west emerged. While 37% of folks in the US reported feeling “excitement” about AI, that shot up to 76% in South Korea and 80% in Thailand. 

In the mild-mannered and meek UK (I can say that because I’m British), 65% of those surveyed told the pollster that they were “nervous” about AI. But the Japanese are positively stoic in comparison, with only 23% harbouring the same concern. 

What’s behind this cultural and geographic divide? It’s tough to say. In South Korea, it’s worth noting that the country retains a market-leading position in the production of semiconductor microchips used by many of the global tech giants. They have skin in the game - AI’s success is their economy’s success. 

And in Japan, artificial intelligence is more deeply embedded into the norms of society. AI-powered robots are credited as playing a significant role in helping the country’s elderly population through the lockdowns of the pandemic era, for example. Perhaps there’s a direct correlation between enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, and the experience of seeing it play a practical, positive role with your own eyes. 

Or maybe it’s not as complicated as that. Throughout Ipsos’ report, there’s a clear gap in positive sentiment between what we might call ‘emerging markets’ and those larger western economies which are feeling insecure about the future for all sorts of reasons.

Percentage support for the idea that “products and services using AI make me excited” hovers around the high 30s in the US, France, Germany, Canada, and the UK. But it shoots up into the 70s in Mexico, Malaysia, Peru, and Turkey. This aligns with a long-term trend, identified by the World Economic Forum in 2021, that optimism for the future in wealthy countries was lower than in developing nations. 

When I put the fact that Americans were feeling gloomy about an AI-powered future to Media.Monks’ Lewis Smithingham, he responded by challenging me to find anything whatsoever that the general public were feeling positive about. In fairness to Lewis, I thought that was a pretty good response. Forget AI utopianism, optimism itself is running low on the ground at the moment. 

In order to feel positive about the future, we need to feel like we’re a part of it. The fact that, according to Reuters and Ipsos, 61% of Americans believe that AI “threatens the future of humanity” suggests that there remains some persuading to be done stateside. 

For all of the different perspectives covered by these surveys, there is one clear thread. And it’s that very few of us still need convincing that AI is going to make life easier. We get that it’s convenient. What more of us in the global west are unsure about is whether more convenience is still a positive thing. Huge swathes of us are living lives which are faster-paced and more convenient than any generation before; and yet the data suggests that we’re feeling pretty glum about it all. Why - and how - is AI going to change that? 

So for those who seek to make the case for AI, those are the questions which now need to be answered. And extra points are available if you can show us, rather than tell us.