For more than a century, popular science fiction has promised us a future filled with robotics and AI technologies. In 2022, many of those dreams are being realized — computers recognize us on sight and cars can drive themselves, we’re building intelligent exoskeletons that multiply our strength and implanting computers in our skulls to augment our intelligence — but that doesn’t mean most of America trusts these breakthrough technologies any further than they can throw them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
A recently published survey from Pew Research sought the opinions of some 10,260 US adults in November 2021 regarding their views on six technologies emerging in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence/machine learning. Specifically, canvassers asked about both more mainstream systems like the use of facial recognition technology by police, the fake news-flagging algorithms used by social media platforms, and autonomous vehicle technology, as well as more cutting-edge ideas like brain-computer interfaces, gene editing and powered exoskeletons.
