A plurality of experts believe the United States should create a new federal agency dedicated to artificial intelligence governance, according to a survey conducted by Axios, Generation Lab, and Syracuse University.
The survey polled 215 computer science professors across 65 of the most prestigious universities in the U.S. on topics related to AI.
we polled 213 computer science professors on A.I.
w/ @axios + @SyracuseU pic.twitter.com/mEDFabWkZy
โ The Generation Lab (@Generation_Lab) September 5, 2023
According to the data, when asked โWhat is the best entity to regulate AI,โ the majority of respondents answered either โnew โDepartment of AIโ government agencyโ (37%) or โglobal organization or treatyโ (22%).
Only 16% answered โcongress,โ just two percent higher than the number of respondents who chose โirrelevant: AI cannot be regulated.โ The final 10% of respondents split their answers between โthe White Houseโ (4%), โthe private sectorโ (3%), and โnone: AI should not be regulatedโ (3%).
The survey also contained questions about how the AI sector will affect the future of employment. The majority of respondents indicated that they would advise a young person to pursue a career in AI, engineering, and data science.
At the other end of the spectrum, 31% of the professors polled said theyโd advise against seeking a career in media and 19% said the same about the arts when asked which fields young people should avoid. โNone of the above'' was the most common response with 42%.
Related: Crypto is in โarms raceโ against AI-powered scams: Quantstamp co-founder
When asked if the respondents think thereโs โa threshold in the evolution of AI after which humans cannot take back control,โ the answers were split between โno, probably notโ (41%), โyes, probablyโ (35%), โno, definitely notโ (19%), and โyes, definitely (6%).
The overall sentiment of the experts seemed in juxtaposition with the general public and business leaders. Where the latter tends to poll bombastically about the potential for AI technology to rapidly change the economic and employment landscape in the near future, 73% of the professors said they believed that AI will be capable of performing less than 20% of tasks that humans do today at or above human-level.
