# U.S. Public Opinion on the Governance of Artificial Intelligence

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.12835 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12835/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 30 Dec 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Artificial Intelligence across Europe: A Study on Awareness, Attitude and Trust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09979/) (2023)
- [Aligning AI with Public Values: Deliberation and Decision-Making for Governing Multimodal LLMs in Political Video Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01817/) (2024)
- [Understanding AI Trustworthiness: A Scoping Review of AIES & FAccT Articles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21293/) (2025)
- [Surveys Considered Harmful? Reflecting on the Use of Surveys in AI Research, Development, and Governance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01458/) (2024)
- [Envisioning Stakeholder-Action Pairs to Mitigate Negative Impacts of AI: A Participatory Approach to Inform Policy Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14869/) (2025)
- [The Hall of AI Fears and Hopes: Comparing the Views of AI Influencers and those of Members of the U.S. Public Through an Interactive Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06016/) (2025)
- [Finnish 5th and 6th graders' misconceptions about Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16644/) (2023)
- [Implications for Governance in Public Perceptions of Societal-scale AI Risks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06199/) (2024)
- [Trust, Experience, and Innovation: Key Factors Shaping American Attitudes About AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05815/) (2025)
- [Retrieval Improvements Do Not Guarantee Better Answers: A Study of RAG for AI Policy QA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24580/) (2026)
- [Whose Voice Counts? Mapping Stakeholder Perspectives on AI Through Public Submissions to the U.S. Government](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22650/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has widespread societal implications, yet social scientists are only beginning to study public attitudes toward the technology. Existing studies find that the public's trust in institutions can play a major role in shaping the regulation of emerging technologies. Using a large-scale survey (N=2000), we examined Americans' perceptions of 13 AI governance challenges as well as their trust in governmental, corporate, and multistakeholder institutions to responsibly develop and manage AI. While Americans perceive all of the AI governance issues to be important for tech companies and governments to manage, they have only low to moderate trust in these institutions to manage AI applications.