Personality and demographic correlates of support for regulating artificial intelligence

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) in our society has sparked many hopes and fears, with people having diverging views on the need to strictly regulate AI. The current study investigates how demographic and personality traits are associated with a desire to strictly regulate AI using a representative sample of adults from New Zealand (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic> = 47,951 participants). Data revealed that support for strict regulation of AI is positively related with agreeableness, neuroticism, and honesty–humility. However, it is negatively related to openness to experiences. A wide range of demographic factors including gender, age, ethnicity, religiosity, neighbourhood level economic deprivation, living rural, relationship status, and parental status were additionally related to support for regulation of AI. However, all these effects were fairly small suggesting that both personality and socio-demographic factors contribute to support for regulating AI, but other factors beyond these characteristics should also be considered for understanding people’s support for regulating AI.</jats:p>