Impact Of AI On Decision Making 

The first uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in the scientific community date back more than 70 years to when Arthur Samuel, a computer scientist, developed a program that could learn the game of checkers independently. However, until relatively recently, AI remained a futuristic concept for the general population.

Today, most people in the Western world regularly use or encounter AI in multiple everyday actions and interactions. From asking Alexa to play our favorite songs, to accessing customer support via chatbots – AI is integrated into so many aspects of modern life, that it can be hard to see how we ever lived without it.

That said, with movies such as I, Robot, The Matrix, and Ex Machina capturing the public imagination, it stands to reason that some people will not trust AI no matter how commonplace it becomes.

We surveyed 2,000 people across the United States on their opinions of AI - including how much they use it and how much trust they would place in artificial intelligence to assist when it comes to making important life decisions.

The results showed that there is still a divide between those who believe AI is an integral part of the future and those who believe it still has a long way to go before it can be a trusted part of any decision-making process.

Most Popular Uses Of AI

Artificial intelligence is something that a lot of people claim to know about. It is also something we perhaps use more in our everyday lives than we might expect.

While specific AI applications may still only be known to a proportion of people, many of us may be surprised to realize just how much we already use AI without knowing. AI is forming part of our social media interactions, our online shopping and search habits, the way we listen to music or ask questions with software such as Alexa and Siri, and more.

The results of our survey showed that almost half (46%) of respondents claimed to know something about artificial intelligence, with over a third (36%) claiming to know a lot and almost the same proportion (32%) saying they used AI regularly.

However, over two-fifths of respondents admitted to not knowing how to use AI at all. Men claim to be more knowledgeable about AI, with 42% saying they know a lot about it, compared to 30% of female respondents. As indicated above, 70% of female respondents and 58% of male respondents may well be using AI every day through online actions without realizing it!

Some of the more popular AI applications include Image AI and ChatGPT. As of July 2023, there were over 100 million users of ChatGPT, a program that uses artificial intelligence to simulate human conversation.

This software can chat with its users and assist in complex tasks such as composing essays, emails, letters, and more. According to our survey, more than half of respondents (55%) had used ChatGPT at least once, and over three-quarters (79%) of respondents thanked the software that had successfully completed their task!

Image-generating AI was almost as popular among the respondents of the survey, with 44% having used some form of Image AI at some point. Of these, the most popular use was to alter body shape, with 85% of users having attempted this.

How AI Influences Everyday Life

Over half (52%) of survey respondents said they had previously used AI to help them make a decision.

On average, men were found to be more likely than women to use AI to influence their decision-making, or even to allow AI to make important decisions for them.

The TOP 5 areas of life people would be willing to let AI influence them include:

The TOP 4 reasons people allow AI to influence their decision-making include:

1. For fun
2. Because they believe they are bad at making their own decisions
3. To make a more informed decision
4. Because they don’t feel they have time to make their own decisions

Online gambling was the most popular area in which people were willing to trust AI to help them make a decision, with a third of respondents (33%) using AI to assist with their casino game strategy.

Casinos and sportsbooks, both online and at brick-and-mortar venues, have been implementing AI into their offerings for many years now, and as AI evolves and progresses, customers are now more likely to involve AI in their gameplay.

Surprisingly, romance was another popular area in which respondents were turning to AI to help them make decisions, such as whether to go on a date with someone they had matched with online (31%), or even whether to propose (30%)!

Other popular, less life-altering decisions people were turning to AI for help with included developing a workout routine (30%) and deciding where in the world to travel next (29%).

Other Eye Catching Stats

While the majority claimed to use AI as part of decision-making for fun, some users have been allowing the technology to influence the direction their lives will take in more serious and long-term ways.

For example:

• A quarter of respondents would let AI decide whether they get married or have children (25%)
• Almost a quarter would let AI influence their child’s name (24%)
• Almost a quarter would let AI influence whether they have sex on the first date (24%)

Is AI the Future?

It certainly looks like AI is starting to change the way we make decisions and how we interact with technology.

Over two-fifths (43%) of survey respondents believe more people will use AI to influence decisions over the next 5 years, and nearly one in three (30%) believe AI will be more intelligent than humans in the next 100 years.

Given how fast AI technology has advanced in the past decade alone, indications suggest it will become even more pervasive and influential over the coming years – the jury is still out!

Sources:

https://www.tableau.com/data-insights/ai/history

https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-chatgpt-and-why-does-it-matter-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/artificial-intelligence-images-dall-e/

https://www.gamblinginsider.com/magazine/598/ai-in-the-gambling-industry-evolving-or-deskilling