In addition to asking whether respondents supported AI development, the survey also included questions designed to gauge their trust in various AI developers. The U.S. military and university researchers emerged as the most trusted and Facebook as the least. But according to a press release statement by Center director Allan Dafoe, there "is no organisation that is highly trusted to develop AI in the public interest." With less than half of Americans in favor of AI development and no single organization emerging as a trusted leader in the field, the AI community could have a tough time drumming up the support it needs to realize AI's potential "It's in the public interest to build AI well, but everyone has to be convinced," Dafoe told Axios. "Consensus isn't there, and there's a real risk that there could be a political backlash against the development and deployment of AI."

Original published in The San Francisco Chronicle (the cover article of Sunday's "Insight" section) What if the data tells you to be racist? Without the right precautions, machine learning -- the technology that drives risk-assessment in law enforcement, as well as hiring and loan decisions -- explicitly penalizes underprivileged groups. Left to its own devices, the algorithm will count a black defendant's race as a strike against them. Yet some data scientists are calling to turn off the safeguards and unleash computerized prejudice, signaling an emerging threat that supersedes the well-known concerns about inadvertent machine bias. Imagine sitting across from a person being evaluated for a job, a loan, or even parole.