Conclusion
We uncovered numerous exciting results, yet simultaneously, an almost equal number of additional research questions emerged, paving the way for future investigations on the topic.
The concept of AI and trust
Our results showed that people in general tend to trust the concept of AI.
However, we found that gender, industry, and location can affect how much people trust the concept of AI:
• Male participants have significantly more trust in AI compared to females.
• People working in the Technical and Industrial Sectors express significantly greater trust in AI compared to those in other industries.
• Individuals from Southern and Eastern Europe showed significantly greater trust in AI compared to North and West.
These findings raise more and more questions about gender and cultural differences or even about the influence of your work industry on how much people trust the concept of AI.
These questions would be worth digging deep into in a future, more focused research project.
AI tools usage
The majority of our participants have already experimented with AI tools before. Those who have already experimented with these tools have overall higher trust related to them.
The tool that most of our participants have tried was ChatGPT, followed by Bing and Bard. The majority of them use these tools at least on a weekly basis or more frequently. Google turned out to be the source where people look for which tool to use, and most of them turn to these tools for personal reasons.
The biggest expectations towards these tools are to save time, improve the quality of work, analyze data, followed by extending knowledge.
The majority of people named ChatGPT as the most frequently used tool, and the reason most of them mentioned is because they enjoy using it.
AI tools and trust
In general, half of the people, at least considerably, trust AI tools they've tried before. Also, people generally are interested to learn more about how these tools work. In the meantime, we found that people still have concerns mostly related to the output of AI tools - meaning, they would fact-check or at least edit the output. So they don't trust the output of these tools completely.
If we consider these findings, in digital designs, we could increase trust in an AI tool and also reflect on people's need to understand more about the background processes of AI tools by educating users about the capabilities and constraints.
Why haven't people tried AI tools?
Last but not least, people who haven't tried AI tools can still see the opportunities in them but mostly are skeptical about them.
And even if we take a look at the differences between people who haven't tried these tools but would be open to trying them and people who haven't used them but wouldn't be open to trying them, we can also see that even if people are not open to trying them in the future can see the opportunities.
