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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Squiz Podcast. We're your shortcut to being informed. Compared to other countries, Australia is low on trust, we're low on acceptance, we're also low on adoption. The majority of people say that they're concerned that elections are being impacted by this, about what AI may over time do to our democratic processes.
Through our evolution, we've had, you know, millennia of experience that's embedded in our DNA on how to trust other people, for example. Here, this very powerful tool that has some human-like capabilities comes along, yet we haven't really had much experience in thinking about how do we calibrate our trust in these tools.
G'day, I'm Andrew Williams. With thanks to Mindaroo Foundation, we're able to bring you this special series on AI, artificial intelligence. Mindaroo Foundation is an Australian philanthropy that's driven by a commitment to create a future where people and the environment we depend on can thrive.
And they have a focus on AI, particularly how we can find the right balance between protecting people and unlocking its benefits. So recent research commissioned by Mindaroo found nearly two-thirds of Australians feel that the pace of AI is too fast. And you, our Squeeze audience, have told us in the past via our own polling that trust is an issue.
Chapter 2: What are the current levels of trust Australians have in AI?
In fact, you trust independent experts over government or tech companies to set the rules for AI in Australia. So in this series, we're going to talk to some of those experts. And first up is Professor Nicole Gillespie. She is a Chair of Organisational Trust with KPMG and a Professor of Management with the University of Melbourne. And for years now,
She's been involved in polling the public on their level of trust in AI. So she's an expert in public sentiment towards it. And she talks about how we're feeling now in Australia, why we rank particularly low when it comes to attitudes towards AI, and where you can go if you're keen to learn more. Here's Nicole. Nicole, thanks very much for joining us on the podcast.
Let's begin with the basics then. What level of trust or otherwise do Australians currently have in artificial intelligence?
Yeah, so look, our 2025 survey of over 48,000 people across 47 countries, it shows that Australians, you know, are pretty cautious about AI. So only 36%, just over a third of Australians say that they trust AI systems. And we find that that low trust holds across a range of different common applications. So everything from GenAI, so, you know, Claude, ChachiBT, Gemini, those sort of tools.
but also AI systems just generally, so it's capturing that general attitude. We also ask about trust in AI systems that have specific applications, like AI use in healthcare to aid the diagnosis and treatment of disease, or even in human resources to help with shortlisting job applicants. So it's really important because trust is contextual.
So we need to really understand it in the context of particular systems. We also find though that Australians are more trusting of the kind of technical ability of AI and its ability to provide a helpful service.
Where they're particularly cautious is around the safety and security of using these systems and also the impact that AI systems, you know, broadly as they scale up are having on people and also on society. We want to gain the benefits of AI use, but we want that without the negative impacts. So we are really concerned about those negative impacts. And that's also reflected in our mixed emotions.
So we find around 45% of Australians say that they're optimistic about AI, you know, wanting those benefits. But we find more, 62%, say they're worried about AI. And quite a lot of people report both. We also find that compared to our earlier surveys, we see a bit of a trend towards concern towards AI actually deepening over time.
So for example, we find that Australians' willingness to rely on AI and the way that they perceive the trustworthiness of AI systems has actually dropped somewhat. And also worry is increasing, probably as people are seeing the impacts more.
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