Abstract

A compact, inexpensive repeated survey on American adults’ attitudes toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) revealed a stable ordering but changing magnitudes of agreement toward three statements. From 2021 to 2023, American adults increasingly agreed AGI was possible to build. Respondents agreed more weakly that AGI should be built. Finally, American adults mostly disagree that an AGI should have the same rights as a human being; disagreeing more strongly in 2023 than in 2021.

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Seeds of Science is a journal (funded through Scott Alexander’s ACX grants program) that publishes speculative or non-traditional articles on scientific topics. Peer review is conducted through community-based voting and commenting by a diverse network of reviewers (or “gardeners” as we call them). Comments that critique or extend the article (the “seed of science”) in a useful manner are published in the final document following the main text.

We have just sent out a manuscript for review, “Attitudes Toward Artificial General Intelligence: Results from American Adults 2021 and 2023”, that may be of interest to some in the EA community so I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in joining us as a gardener and providing feedback on the article. As noted above, this is an opportunity to have your comment recorded in the scientific literature (comments can be made with real name or pseudonym).

It is free to join as a gardener and anyone is welcome (we currently have gardeners from all levels of academia and outside of it). Participation is entirely voluntary—we send you submitted articles and you can choose to vote/​comment or abstain without notification (so no worries if you don’t plan on reviewing very often but just want to take a look here and there at the articles people are submitting).

To register, you can fill out this google form. From there, it’s pretty self-explanatory—I will add you to the mailing list and send you an email that includes the manuscript, our publication criteria, and a simple review form for recording votes/​comments. If you would like to just take a look at this article without being added to the mailing list, then just reach out (info@theseedsofscience.org) and say so.

Happy to answer any questions about the journal through email or in the comments below.