There’s strong bipartisan support for Biden’s executive order on AI

The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.

Why we asked about the executive order on AI: The White House recently issued a lengthy, sweeping executive order about responsible AI development and deployment. It makes recommendations for federal agencies as well as directing Congress to act on a variety of policy goals. It’s a little unclear how much impact it will actually have, but do Americans support the ideas in it?

What we found: Yup. There is strong and – even strong bipartisan – support for most of the initiatives. More than 70% of Democrats and Republicans support developing standards to test that AI systems are safe, establishing best practices for detecting AI content, providing clear guidance for housing and other federal programs to keep AI from being used to discriminate people and working with other nations to support responsible AI development.

That last one is already well in progress. Kind of. Many nations, including the U.S. and China, met in the U.K. earlier this month and produced a declaration stating concern, but not actually creating any policy guidelines. They’re going to meet again in six months, which one could cynically point out is a million years from now in AI time, should one be feeling cynical. One could also say that seems like a really fast timeline for global cooperation.

Even ChatGPT 4.0 says, “The next six months are likely to see trends continue to unfold, shaping the AI landscape into an even more integral part of the technological and business world.” But back to the data.

One break in the bipartisan support is on the idea of increasing federal funding for research on AI, which is supported by 60% of Democrats but only 43% of Republicans.

More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:

Americans have more confidence in the economy than a year ago

Americans expect a COVID surge in winter

Americans care about a court case that could upend the real estate industry