Europeans' trust in AI nearly half what corporates believe it to be

A new study conducted by the market research and insight agency Opinium and released by tech consultancy Hotwire Global reveals a significant gap between Western European business leaders' perceptions and the public's actual feelings about frontier artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The research indicates that only 46% of the European public across France, Germany, the UK, Italy, and Spain feels positive about businesses adopting AI technologies. This figure contrasts sharply with almost 80% of businesses that believe the public trusts their use of such technologies, highlighting a substantial overconfidence among business leaders regarding public sentiment. This disparity suggests a potential disconnect between the pace of technological advancement in the corporate world and the level of acceptance and understanding among the general population.

The study also found that public trust in tech entrepreneurs is low, with the European public being 29% less likely to identify them as a trustworthy source of information about these technologies. Instead, the general public places more trust in the expertise of scientists and researchers. This finding underscores a preference for evidence-based information and cautious, expert-driven perspectives compared to the often enthusiastic and commercially driven narratives of tech entrepreneurs. The findings also suggest that the public may be more receptive to information that emphasises rigorous testing, ethical considerations, and potential societal impacts of new technologies rather than solely focusing on their innovative or profit-generating aspects.