Sense of Threat of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The fact that human existence is accompanied by a constant sense of uncertainty and threat is an intrinsic phenomenon thereof. This is because in addition to the ‘old’, apprehended and partly controlled threats, there appear some ‘new’ forms against which it is difficult to establish any procedures (Bonβ, 1995; Beck, 2002). One such aspect is, undoubtedly, the relation between humans and digital innovations including tools based on artificial intelligence. In orderto contribute to this debate, an empirical study was designed the main objective of which is to determine the level of the sense of threat of AI. The method of diagnostic survey was employed to design a survey questionnaire. The survey was conducted in 2024 and included a random sample of 310 participants from Poland. The findings presented in this paper indicate that both socio-demographic factors (i.e. sex, age, education, and social and occupational status) and individual factors (i.e. frequency of AI use, assessment of the level of knowledge about AI, and assessment of level of AI skills) have an impact on the level of the sense of threat of AI. In the cognitive domain, women experienced a higher sense of threat of AI than men. The level of concerns regarding AI in the cognitive domain is reduced with the age and education level of the respondents. The study has shown that more frequent use of AI is associated with a decrease in the cognitive and psychosocial domains. The sense of threat of AI also decreases with
increasing level of the participants’ self-assessed AI awareness and their skills in using AI tools.