Read the interview in English.

How do people develop an awareness or understanding of AI?

Matthias Spörrle: Humans define themselves in a strong way through intelligence and rightly so: intelligence in particular is what sets us apart from other living beings and especially from other primates. Our intelligence has produced the special achievements that brought us to the moon and to the deepest part of the oceans. Because of our intelligence, we are the only species to have populated every climate zone on our planet - apart from the creatures we brought with us. We don't owe this to our strength or our senses; our intelligence is the central reason for this.
Starting with the industrial revolution, we have already transferred the mechanical power of our hands and arms, for example, to machines. Today, there are machines of which a single one produces more power than all the people who are estimated to have ever built the pyramid of Cheops. Our mechanical achievements - which we owe to our intelligence - have long since surpassed us in terms of mechanical performance. Now this is beginning to happen again with our last core feature, our intelligence.
We humans are noticing what is special about this development; for us, it is a matter of substance, it is about the essentials - in the literal sense. It is therefore hardly surprising that we humans react so strongly to the topic of artificial intelligence. Our first awareness of artificial intelligence comes from an understanding of our own intelligence; we use our intelligence as a guide.

Isn't that misleading?

There are risks here, for example risks of humanization - in science we call this anthropomorphization: we think that artificial intelligence is what we can do cognitively, but performed by machines. But that is not yet the case. Artificial intelligence does not yet have a broader understanding of context; it is not an intelligence of the whole, but of individual performances. An example: If I give the image generation AI Midjourney the task of painting a father with three daughters and two sons in a landscape in a certain style, I get an appealing picture in this style of high quality, in which several people can be found. But the number of people does not correspond to the specification.

There are many people who can count to six, and there are some people who could create a landscape in a desired style. However, there are practically no people who have the ability to paint in this style, but at the same time do not have the ability to add small numbers. This is just one example to illustrate the point: When it comes to intelligence, we humans assume that we have at least a rudimentary mathematical ability if we have a high level of artistic ability, for example. This is true for human intelligence, but not for artificial intelligence. We do not yet have a general artificial intelligence, but we allow ourselves to be dazzled by brilliant individual achievements. For most of us, our understanding of artificial intelligence is based on our concept of human intelligence and that is wrong.

"The fact that people seize power through tools is really nothing new. AI is also used in this way. So the danger so far has not come from the technology itself, but from those who misuse it."

Is acceptance greater when AI is useful or fun?

Artificial intelligence is used in our everyday lives - whether we consciously perceive it as AI or not remains to be seen. But suggestions for product purchases, travel routes and recommendations for media that we should consume are based on AI algorithms. And our own research as part of Computer&Automation AI RESEARCH has shown that the more a person uses such technologies in their everyday life, the more they experience themselves as using the opportunities offered by the technology and are therefore more willing to accept it. Interestingly, the people we surveyed also felt that they were better prepared for the disadvantages and risks of AI as a result of using it. This can be questioned critically: By using AI, for example, I am not automatically better protected against AI-generated video forgeries.

In principle, a technology is accepted and used if it is perceived as pleasant, valuable, easily accessible, similar to the person using it and low-risk. Many of these characteristics are a given for today's AI-based products or can at least be simulated well. The use of AI-based technologies will continue to increase and, according to the results of our research, this will further increase acceptance, a positive feedback loop.

Interview with Prof. Dr. Matthias Spörrle - Page 2

Creative Dyscalculia - Image generated by Midjourney based on the instruction: Imagine "A father with his three adult sons and two adult daughters on a boat on a lake in a beautiful landscape in the style of Caspar David Friedrich".

© Midjourney

What role does the social and professional environment play in the acceptance of AI? Are there differences between industries or working environments?

Humans are, of course, social animals; we take our cues from others and look left and right before we try something; being laughed at when we fail is less of a problem for some of us than for others, but it is not easy for anyone. A society that is open to artificial intelligence, an organization that requires its members to engage with AI, colleagues who inspire me in my dealings with AI and a manager who sets an example of how to work with the technology naturally increase the social tailwind so that I also engage with this technology.

There are big differences between the individual sectors, and those with an affinity for technology are of course much more advanced here. However, we must not forget that intelligence is important in every area of our work, as mentioned above. For example, archaeologists recently used AI to translate ancient writings from the Akkadian Empire. Even if individual areas of our activities and work may not have had much to do with computers in the past, they all have to do with intelligence. So there are varying degrees of willingness to use AI in different industries and fields of activity, but I don't think that there are fundamentally fewer opportunities or less promising fields of application in the individual fields of activity. Intelligence is in demand almost everywhere. Anyone doing pioneering work here now and introducing the technology into new areas can position themselves successfully quickly and with very little effort.

We are currently in the process of automating all work that is carried out on a screen. Being tied to the computer workstation means that there is enough data available, which we (still) need for training artificial intelligence. Specifically: Is your work mainly carried out using digital channels or can it be carried out using these channels? Then, sooner or later, data for training AI will be obtained from this. The work will then first be supported by AI and then replaced. I think that, at least in economies like ours, the majority of all work is already carried out digitally, i.e. on a screen - from programming, virtual meetings and working with spreadsheet software to operating the control room. All of these areas are therefore accessible to the AI-based development that is currently underway. It will take a little longer for mechanical work, as less training data is digitally accessible here. The vast majority of us should be open to AI in our own field of work and should actively engage with it.

"For most of us, our understanding of artificial intelligence is based on our concept of human intelligence, and that is wrong."

Dr. Matthias Spörrle is Professor of Business Psychology with a research focus on human decision-making processes in digital and economic contexts at the Private University of Seeburg Castle.

© Matthias Spörrle

With regard to AI - what developments and effects will we have to expect in the future?

Let's make a prediction: at some point between 2025 and 2030, the majority of data - audio, video, text - on the internet that is currently still predominantly created by humans and experienced by us will no longer be generated by humans, but by artificial intelligence. We should not only think of texts from LLMs or images from text-to-image generators - Midjourney alone currently generates between 250 and 500 images per minute - but also videos, pieces of music and voice messages created by AIs. Because a few sentences spoken by you are enough to imitate your language; I can then make you say anything and turn it into podcasts, for example. This will have profound effects on several levels: The internet will largely become an environment whose sensory information no longer comes from us humans, but is only inspired by our training data. So in a way, AI will start to train us. Do you still feel like you are talking to me when you are no longer talking to me, but only to a chatbot - hopefully authorized by me - that speaks like me, that has been pre-trained on a large language corpus and re-trained with personal messages from me? How will your communication with me change if you know that you can no longer distinguish digitally between me and my bot?

From then on, the majority of the information on which AIs are trained is also generated by AIs. This could give rise to separate training paths for AIs, which will be detached from the sensory input generated by humans over a longer period of time. Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD), the increasing deterioration of the results of generative AIs that are repeatedly trained with their own results, is currently being discussed in this context. The replacement of human-generated training data is already beginning, as individual applications work with artificial training data, for example for rare events with a consequently small database, or game-centered AIs no longer work with human games, but only learn from games against themselves. This means that humans are no longer even needed as a source of training data.