As Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly influences various aspects of society, there is growing public interest in its potential benefits and risks. In this paper we present results of public perception of AI from a survey conducted with 10,000 respondents spanning ten countries in four continents around the world. The results show that currently an equal percentage of respondents who believe AI will change the world as we know it, also believe AI needs to be heavily regulated. However, our findings also indicate that despite the general sentiment among the global public that AI will replace workers, if a company were to use AI to innovate to improve lives, the public would be more likely to think highly of the company, purchase from them and even be interested in a job in that company. Our results further reveal that the global public largely views AI as a tool for problem solving. These nuanced results underscore the importance of AI directed towards challenges that the public would like science and technology-based innovations to address. We draw on a multi-year 3M study of public perception of science to provide further context on what the public perceives as important problems to be solved.

翻译：随着人工智能日益影响社会的各个方面，公众对其潜在效益与风险的关注度持续增长。本文通过一项覆盖全球四大洲十个国家、包含一万名受访者的调查，呈现了公众对人工智能感知的研究结果。数据显示，当前认为"人工智能将改变我们所知世界"的受访者比例，与认为"人工智能需要严格监管"的比例基本持平。然而研究发现，尽管全球公众普遍认为人工智能将取代劳动力，但如果企业运用人工智能进行创新以改善人类生活，公众对该企业的评价会显著提升，更倾向于购买其产品，甚至对该企业的职位产生兴趣。研究进一步表明，全球公众主要将人工智能视为解决问题的工具。这些细致的结果凸显了将人工智能导向公众期望科技创新应对的挑战的重要性。我们借鉴3M公司多年开展的公众科学感知研究，进一步阐释了公众心目中亟待解决的重要问题范畴。