Stephen Downes

I saw this article (59 page PDF) mentioned on LinkedIn last week, had a look for myself, and concluded that the results were to be expected given how the question was set up. I was prepared to leave it there, but now the item is growing legs and needs comment. Here's the alluring argument: "people with lower AI literacy are typically more receptive to AI." Peter Greene immediately goes all-in on the conclusion: "To sell more of this non-magical product, make sure not to actually educate consumers. Emphasize the magic, and go after the low-information folks." But here's the thing: everything depends on how you define 'AI literacy'. Now there's just enough vagueness to prevent this from being a slam dunk, which is why I was content to leave things as they were, but it seems to me that if AI literacy is being defined as being more sceptical (which, arguably, it is in this paper) then you would expect people who are AI literate to be more sceptical. So the conclusion is: sceptical people are sceptical. Not a highlight in the annals of human factors research.