Using artificial intelligence (AI)? Risk and opportunity perception of AI predict people’s willingness to use AI

Surveys worldwide show that the public perceives artificial intelligence (AI) as a double-edged sword: A risk and an opportunity. However, how this ambiguous perception of AI is related to people’s willingness to use AI-based applications has yet to be investigated. To this end, two online experiments were conducted, including two samples, N = 246 and N = 495 (quota-sample, representative for age and gender). As hypothesized, people’s risk-opportunity perception of AI applications correlated positively with the probability of using AI. Exploratory analyses indicated that people’s willingness to use AI significantly depended on the context of AI use (medicine vs. transport vs. media vs. psychology). This research expands existing behavioral research by investigating ambiguous and not solely risk-taking behavior for different AI application contexts. Study results motivate the investigation of causal-effect relations and underline the need to understand risk and opportunity perception stability across different contexts of AI use.