of 32,000 global respondents from the consultancy firm Edelman, public trust is already eroding less than 18 months into the so-called "AI revolution" that popped off with OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022.
"Trust is the currency of the AI era, yet, as it stands, our innovation account is dangerously overdrawn," Justin Westcott, the global technology chair for the firm, told"Companies must move beyond the mere mechanics of AI to address its true cost and value — the 'why' and 'for whom.'"Trust in AI is down globally from 61 percent in 2019 to just 53 percent, per the Edelman poll.
That dip in percentages since 2019 isn't all that surprising. Before 2022, AI was more the stuff of science fiction andPerhaps the biggest takeaway from the firm's "trust barometer" is that on average, people across the world believe by a two-to-one margin that AI innovation thus far has been "badly managed," as CEO Richard Edelman said in a
What's more, although a whopping 76 percent of people trust the tech industry in general, only half trust AI, a gap that certainly needs further exploration as tech giants liketo inform them on AI safety, providing an opportunity for the research community to step up as authorities on the subject. "Those who prioritize responsible AI, who transparently partner with communities and governments, and who put control back into the hands of the users, will not only lead the industry but will rebuild the bridge of trust that technology has, somewhere along the way, lost," Wescott told