Ginevra Prelle (UniMi & CCA)

Artificial intelligence and institutional trust: promise or peril?

Venue: Campus Luigi Einaudi, room 3 D1 01

Abstract: The public sector is increasingly adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the provision of social policies but current knowledge on possible consequences is extremely limited. We focus on institutional trust as a specific consequence. Existing research ignores two elements that we argue are essential for understanding AI adoption and trust: AI awareness and experiences with institutions. We explore these factors as driving not only people’s trust in algorithms but their overall trust in welfare systems implementing AI to profile citizens. We propose a vignette experiment combined with survey measures to test the effect of these two factors in Italy. In the experiment, people firstly provide their trust without knowing who makes a decision in a scenario describing a real social policy. After, they are revealed whether the decision was made by a human, a hybrid system, or an AI. Our core argument is that, in contrast to what existing theories assume, the effect of revelation should depend upon people’s prior experiences and trust in institutions.