Concerns Surrounding Privacy, Security and Lack of Control Still Inhibit Broader AI Adoption

Boston, MA – September 21, 2017 – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly growing due to its implementation in smart home and IoT technologies; its current use cases include learning and predicting behaviors, providing reminders and recommendations, and complete task automation. A recent study from the User Experience Strategies (UXS) service at Strategy Analytics, “ 41% of Consumers Believe Artificial Intelligence Will Make Their Lives Better ”, exploring interest in AI use cases and consumers’ perceptions of AI in the US, Western Europe, China and India, has found that while two fifths of consumers surveyed expect AI to enhance their quality of life, concerns regarding privacy, security and a lack of control of the technology itself, still exist.

Key report findings include:

• Across all regions surveyed more than 40% of respondents on average believe that AI will make their lives better; though this sentiment is much higher in India and China than in the US and Western Europe.
• Respondents in all regions showed greatest interest for AI in smartphone reminders. This data suggests that consumers still need to utilize AI for simple tasks to build enough trust for more complex use cases. Manual control still remains essential for consumers at present.
• Lack of trust still surrounds the privacy and security of data. Consumers are still uncertain as to how their data is utilized, where it will end up and importantly, even when harvested, if the technology will work properly.

“Respondents in both China & India expressed greater levels of interest across all specific use cases surveyed, with more than half of in each region indicating they are either extremely or very interested in each of those listed” commented Christopher Dodge, Associate Director and report author. “Comparatively in the US & Western Europe, interest only surpassed 40% for two use cases in each region: reminders and prediction alerts in the US, and reminders and task automation in Western Europe.”

“This demonstrates the need to build up trust through simple use cases” continued Dodge . “Once this is established, consumers will be more willing to accept AI to complete more complex tasks and in doing so, achieve the enhanced quality of life that they are expecting,” Chris Schreiner , Director of Syndicated Research, UXIP, added “Privacy and security, coupled with current high costs and fragmentation issues, will continue to serve as barriers for continued and widespread adoption. Therefore, it is crucial for AI developers to ensure consumers have the most realistic and natural approach to intelligence through voice HMI’s, data transparency, holistic integration and improved user profiling.”