Lower Artificial Intelligence Literacy Predicts Greater AI Receptivity

A paper finds people who know less about AI are more open to it, because it seems magical to them. How that matches what I see.
January 24, 2025 ยท Simon Wisdom

This paper finds that people with lower AI literacy are more receptive to AI due to perceiving it as magical and awe-inspiring.

This matches some of my recent anecdotal experience.

  • The people I know who are most sceptical of AI don’t use it regularly, or at all, and aren’t even sure how
  • There are some who use it blindly for everything, and this results in, predictably, a lot of slop
  • I try to fall somewhere between the ‘Critical’ and ‘Engaged’. It’s mostly empowering me to do way more than I could before. I think there is a lot more I could be using it for

I tend to think of it like this: