Two new Imagining the Digital Future Center (ITDF) reports that are focused on the likely impact of AI on individuals and society by 2040 were released Feb. 29, 2024. For the first time, the research team responsible for Elon University’s long-running series of “Future of Digital Life” reports paired a U.S. national public opinion poll with the global canvassing of experts that has been its hallmark. The international market research and consulting firm Ipsos conducted the public opinion poll for the center and collected a large set of quantitative results. As they have for all of the Center’s previous reports over the past two decades-plus, ITDF leaders Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson conducted all of the research in the canvassing of global experts. This methods page begins with the Ipsos topline data from its study of the U.S. public. The details of the methods used by Elon researchers in the canvassing of global experts follows below the national poll.
Academic citation: Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson, “A New Age of Enlightenment? A New Threat to Humanity? The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040,” Imagining the Digital Future Center, Elon University, Elon, North Carolina, February 2024.
National Public Opinion Poll methodology
The public opinion survey was conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based online panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel. For those who agree to participate, but do not already have Internet access, Ipsos provides at no cost a laptop/netbook and ISP connection. People who already have computers and Internet service are permitted to participate using their own equipment. Panelists then receive unique log-in information for accessing surveys online, and then are sent emails throughout each month inviting them to participate in research. This survey was conducted on the Ipsos Omnibus survey. The firm’s explanation of its KnowledgePanel and Omnibus survey methodology is here.
Topline from Ipsos survey
ELON UNIVERSITY IPSOS OMNIBUS – KNOWLEDGE PANEL
OCTOBER 20-22, 2023; N=1,021
ASK ALL: BLH2
One way to define artificial intelligence (AI) is computer technology that performs tasks that humans typically do, such as understanding language and answering questions. How much have you heard or read about artificial intelligence (AI)?
A lot 32
A little 59
Nothing at all 9
Refused *
ASK ALL: BLH3
Overall, how will the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) affect the quality of people’s daily lives? The impact of AI will be …
More positive than negative 17
More negative than positive 29
Equally positive and negative 31
Don’t know 23
Refused 1
ASK ALL: BLH4
Do you think it is possible or not possible for people to design artificial intelligence (AI) computer programs that can consistently make decisions in people’s best interest in complex situations?
Yes, it is possible 31
No, it is not possible 31
Not sure 38
Refused 1
ASK ALL: BLH6
By the year 2040, what level of impact will AI have on each of the following? The impact will be …
| Far more positive than negative | Somewhat more positive than negative | Equally positive, negative | Somewhat more negative than positive | Far more negative than positive | Little or no impact | Not Sure | Refused | |
| People’s basic human rights | 2 | 6 | 17 | 19 | 22 | 4 | 28 | 2 |
| People’s privacy | 2 | 3 | 10 | 23 | 43 | 1 | 17 | 2 |
| People’s opportunities for employment | 3 | 7 | 14 | 24 | 31 | 1 | 18 | 1 |
| People’s day-to-day work tasks and activities | 7 | 24 | 19 | 14 | 15 | 2 | 18 | 1 |
| People’s physical and mental health | 5 | 13 | 20 | 18 | 17 | 2 | 24 | 2 |
ASK ALL: BLH7
By the year 2040, what level of impact will AI have on each of the following? The impact will be …
| Far more positive than negative | Somewhat more positive than negative | Equally positive, negative | Somewhat more negative than positive | Far more negative than positive | Little or no impact | Not Sure | Refused | |
| People’s access to knowledge and information from accurate, trusted resources | 8 | 21 | 19 | 14 | 16 | 2 | 19 | 1 |
| People’s relationship with others | 2 | 5 | 19 | 23 | 23 | 6 | 21 | 1 |
| People spend their leisure time | 5 | 16 | 23 | 13 | 12 | 5 | 26 | 1 |
ASK ALL: BHL8
Now, some more general questions about the possible impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on society and institutions.
By the year 2040, what level of impact will AI have on each of the following? The impact will be …
| Far more positive than negative | Somewhat more positive than negative | Equally positive, negative | Somewhat more negative than positive | Far more negative than positive | Little or no impact | Not Sure | Refused | |
| Reducing wealth inequalities in society | 3 | 5 | 13 | 14 | 23 | 11 | 30 | 1 |
| Level of civility in society | 2 | 5 | 17 | 19 | 21 | 7 | 27 | 2 |
| Healthcare systems and the quality of medical treatment people receive | 11 | 25 | 17 | 11 | 11 | 2 | 21 | 2 |
| Environmental protection and sustainability | 5 | 17 | 18 | 11 | 12 | 6 | 29 | 2 |
| Politics and elections | 2 | 5 | 13 | 16 | 35 | 3 | 24 | 2 |
ASK ALL: BLH9
Thinking again to the year 2040, by 2040, what level of impact will AI have on each of the following? The impact will be …
| Far more positive than negative | Somewhat more positive than negative | Equally positive, negative | Somewhat more negative than positive | Far more negative than positive | Little or no impact | Not Sure | Refused | |
| Primary and secondary schools | 6 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 18 | 2 | 21 | 1 |
| Colleges and universities | 7 | 17 | 19 | 15 | 19 | 1 | 22 | 1 |
About Ipsos
Ipsos is the world’s third-largest Insights and Analytics company, present in 90 markets and employing more than 18,000 people. Its research professionals, analysts and scientists have built unique multi-specialist capabilities that provide insights into the actions, opinions and motivations of citizens, consumers, patients, customers or employees. It serves more than 5,000 clients across the world with 75 business solutions. Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has been listed on the Euronext Paris since July 1, 1999. The company is part of the SBF 120 and the Mid-60 index and is eligible for the Deferred Settlement Service (SRD). Reuters ISOS.PA, Bloomberg IPS: F.P. www.ipsos.com
Experts canvassing methodology
This methodology section shows the process that led to the resulting report on the 17th “Future of the Internet” canvassing by Elon University – this is the first report released by Elon’s expanded and renamed Imagining the Digital Future Center. It was conducted amid rising attention, enthusiasm and concern about the role artificial intelligence (AI) is playing in people’s lives and in broad societal systems.
Participants were asked to respond to multiple-choice and open-ended questions, including an invitation to address a primary research question about their expectations for overall impact of AI by the year 2040. The canvassing of experts was conducted through a Qualtrics online instrument between Oct. 4 and Nov. 6, 2023. Invited respondents included technology innovators and developers, business and policy leaders, researchers, analysts and activists. In all, 328 experts responded to at least one aspect of the canvassing, including 251 who answered multiple-choice questions and 166 who provided written answers to the key open-ended question. The extended answers in the pages of this report are those that were replies to this prompt:
Considering the likely changes created by the proliferation of AI in individuals’ daily lives and in society’s social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? What stands out as most significant to you? Why? What is most likely to be gained and lost in the next 15 or so years?
The web-based canvassing instrument was first sent directly 2,000 experts (primarily U.S.-based, 38% located outside North America). Those invited were identified by Elon University during previous studies. The list also includes many people who were identified in a 2003 study of people who made predictions about the likely future of the internet between 1990 and 1995. More than 1,000 of these invited respondents were added to our database of experts in the fall of 2023. We invited professionals and policy people from government bodies and technology businesses, think tanks and interest networks (for instance, those that include professionals and academics in law, ethics, philosophy, political science, economics, social and civic innovation, sociology, psychology, education and communications); globally located people working with communications technologies in government positions; technologists and innovators; top universities’ engineering/computer science, political science, sociology/anthropology and business/entrepreneurship faculty, graduate students and postgraduate researchers; and some who are active in civil society organizations that focus on digital life and those affiliated with newly emerging nonprofits and other research units examining the impacts of digital life.
Among those invited to participate were researchers, developers and business leaders from leading global organizations, technology companies and research labs, and leaders active in the advancement of and innovation in global communications networks and technology policy, such as the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society (ISOC), the United Nations’ Global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) AI Experts Panel. Invitees were encouraged to share the survey link with others they believed would have an interest in participating, thus there may have been a small “snowball” effect as some invitees welcomed others to weigh in.
The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of their employers; the descriptions of their leadership roles help identify their background and the locus of their expertise. Some responses are lightly edited for style and readability.
A number of the expert respondents elected to remain anonymous. Because people’s level of expertise is an important element of their participation in the conversation, anonymous respondents were given the opportunity to share a description of their internet expertise or background, and this was noted, when available, in this report.
Some 216 respondents gave details about their locale. Of the experts who made that disclosure, 62% reported being located in North America, 20% are in Europe and 18% said they are located in other parts of the world.
Of the respondents who indicated their “primary area of interest,” 33% identified themselves as professors/teachers; 14% as futurists or consultants; 17% as research scientists; 9% as technology developers or administrators; 8% as advocates or activist users; 4% as pioneers or originators of the internet or online tools; 3% as entrepreneurs or business leaders and 11% specified their primary area of interest as “other.”
What follows is a brief list of key respondents who took credit for their responses to the primary qualitative question in this canvassing. Workplaces reflect the respondents’ job titles and locations at the time of this canvassing.
Stephen Abram, principal at Lighthouse Consulting; Greg Adamson, vice president of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology; Stephan Adelson, longtime leading digital health consultant; Lene Rachel Andersen, economist, author, futurist and philosopher at Nordic Bildung; Joscha Bach, fellow at the Thistledown Foundation, previously principal AI engineer at Intel Labs; Avi Bar-Zeev, president, XR Guild and XR pioneer who has developed the tech at Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google; John Battelle, owner of Battelle Media; Richard Bennett, founder of the High-Tech Forum; Christine Boese, vice president and lead user-experience designer and researcher at JPMorgan Chase financial services; Tim Bray, founder and principal at Textuality Services, previously a vice president at Amazon; Dennis Bushnell, a futurist and chief scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center; Jamais Cascio, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future; Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president at Google; Chuck Cosson, director of privacy and data security at T-Mobile; Mary Chayko, professor of communication and information at Rutgers University; Barry K. Chudakov, founder and principal at Sertain Research; Willie Currie, a longtime global communications policy expert based in Africa; Sara (Meg) Davis, professor of digital Health and Rights at the University of Warwick; Rosalie Day, co-founder at Blomma; Judith Donath, fellow, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, and founder, Sociable Media Group, MIT Media Lab; Esther Dyson, Internet pioneer, journalist and founder of Wellville; Michael G. Dyer, professor emeritus of computer science, UCLA; Devin Fidler, foresight strategist and founder of Rethinkery; Anriette Esterhuysen, Internet Hall of Fame member from South Africa; Seth Finkelstein, principal at Finkelstein Consulting and Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award winner; Tracey Follows, CEO of Futuremade; Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future; Jerome C. Glenn, co-founder and CEO of The Millennium Project; Jonathan Grudin, affiliate professor, University of Washington, recently principal researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft; Seth Herd, a futurist and computational cognitive neuroscience researcher now working on human-AI alignment; Terri Horton, founder of FuturePath; Alan S. Inouye, director for information technology policy, American Library Association; Paul Jones, professor emeritus of information science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Frank Kaufmann, president, Twelve Gates Foundation; Tim Kelly, Kenya-based lead ICT policy specialist at the World Bank; Jim Kennedy, senior vice president for strategy, The Associated Press; Michael Kleeman, senior fellow, University of California-San Diego (previously with Boston Consulting and Sprint); Jonathan Kolber, futurist and member of TechCast Global; David J. Krieger, director of the Institute for Communication and Leadership, Switzerland; Lawrence Lannom, vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives; Sam Lehman-Wilzig, professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and author of “Virtuality and Humanity”; Leah A. Lievrouw, professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; Clifford Lynch, director, Coalition for Networked Information; Giacomo Mazzone, secretary-general of Eurovisioni and member of the advisory council of the European Digital Media Observatory; Sean McGregor, founding director of UL Research Institutes, developing safe, open-source digital systems; Lee Warren McKnight, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation, Syracuse University; Filippo Menczer, director of the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University; Alan D. Mutter,consultant and former Silicon Valley CEO; Satoshi Narihara, associate professor of information law at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan; Bitange Ndemo, professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Nairobi Business School and chair of the Kenya AI Task Force; Beth Simone Noveck, director, Burnes Center for Social Change and GovLab; Kunle Olorundare, vice president, Internet Society, Nigeria; Aviv Ovadya, a founder of the AI & Democracy Foundation; Zizi Papacharissi, professor of communications and political science, University of Illinois-Chicago; Raymond Perrault, co-director of Stanford University’s AI Index Report 2023 anda leading computer scientist at SRI International from 1988-2017; Calton Pu, co-director, Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology; Chen Qiufan, co-author with leading AI expert Kai-Fu Lee of the book “AI 2041: 10 Visions for Our Future”; Howard Rheingold, pioneering internet sociologist and author of “The Virtual Community”; Mauro D. Rios, adviser to the eGovernment Agency of Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan Internet Society chapter; Kyle Rose, principal architect, Akamai Technologies; Louis Rosenberg, CEO and chief scientist, Unanimous AI; George Sadowsky, Internet Hall of Famer and former Internet Society Board of Trustees member; Richard Salz,principal architect at Akamai Technologies; Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN; Melisssa Sassi, partner at MachineLab Ventures; Russ White, Internet infrastructure architect and Internet pioneer; Daniel S. Schiff, assistant professor and co-director of the Governance and Responsible AI Lab at Purdue University; William L. Schrader, Internet Hall of Fame member and advisor to CEOs, a co-founder of PSINet; Ray Schroeder, retired associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois, Springfield; Henning Schulzrinne, Internet Hall of Fame member and co-chair of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE; Ben Shneiderman, human-computer interaction pioneer and author of “Human-Centered AI”; Katindi Sivi, founder and director of the LongView Group, Nairobi, Kenya; Jim Spohrer, retired executive who led major projects at IBM and Apple; Sharon Sputz, director of strategic programs at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute; Jon Stine, director of the Open Voice Network; Brad Templeton, chairman emeritus at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Jaak Tepandi, professor emeritus of knowledge-based systems at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia Charalambos Tsekeris, senior fellow in digital sociology at Greece’s National Centre for Social Research; Maja Vujovic, owner and director of Compass Communications in Belgrade, Serbia; Pamela Wisniewski, director of the Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab at Vanderbilt University; Michael Wollowski, professor of computer science at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Roberto V. Zicari, head of the international Z-Inspection AI initiative.
The topline findings from the canvassing of experts
2023 ELON UNIVERSITY CANVASSING OF EXPERTS
OCTOBER 4-NOVEMBER 6, 2023
N=Varies by question and is around 250 respondents per question
Q. By the year 2040, what level of impact will AI have on each of the following? The impact will be …
Q. Now, some more general questions about the possible impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on society and institutions. By the year 2040, what level of impact will AI have on each of the following? The impact will be …
| Far more positive than negative | Somewhat more positive than negative | Equally positive, negative | Somewhat more negative than positive | Far more negative than positive | Little or no impact | |
| Reducing wealth inequalities in society | 3% | 9% | 14% | 29% | 41% | 4% |
| Overall economic performance | 22% | 39% | 25% | 7% | 5% | 1% |
| Level of civility in society | 4% | 8% | 32% | 30% | 22% | 3% |
| Healthcare systems and the quality of medical treatment people receive | 33% | 45% | 13% | 11% | 5% | * |
| Environmental protection and sustainability | 14% | 38% | 25% | 12% | 8% | 3% |
| Politics and elections | 4% | 5% | 24% | 25% | 42% | 1% |
| Criminal justice system | 7% | 18% | 33% | 25% | 42% | 3% |
| Warfare | 5% | 8% | 23% | 18% | 43% | 2% |
| Primary and secondary schools | 11% | 38% | 21% | 20% | 7% | 4% |
| Colleges and universities | 14% | 37% | 22% | 15% | 10% | 3% |
| Transportation systems’ ability to move people and goods safely and efficiently | 33% | 44% | 16% | 2% | 3% | 1% |
| Quality of life in cities | 12% | 36% | 37% | 5% | 5% | 4% |
| Quality of life in rural and remote areas | 12% | 28% | 39% | 7% | 6% | 8% |
Q. How likely is it that there will be a scientific consensus by 2040 that AGI has been achieved?
Very likely 19%
Somewhat likely 26%
Somewhat unlikely 24%
Very unlikely 25%
Don’t know 6%
Q. On balance, do the advances you expect toward AGI by 2040 make you feel …
More excited than concerned 16%
Equally excited and concerned 39%
More concerned than excited 37%
Neither excited nor concerned 7%
Q. How likely is it that AGI could pose an existential risk to humanity at some point in the future, probably beyond 2040?
Very likely 16%
Somewhat likely 32%
Somewhat unlikely 21%
Very unlikely 25%
Don’t know 5%
Thus, overall, 48% said they think it is very or somewhat likely such a risk could be posed; and 46% said their guess is that it is very or somewhat unlikely; 5% said they don’t know.
The primary research question, an open-ended question, was asked after respondents viewed all of the quantitative questions above. The 166 responses constitute the majority of this report.
Considering the likely changes created by the proliferation of AI in individuals’ daily lives and in society’s social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? What stands out as most significant to you? Why? What is most likely to be gained and lost in the next 15 or so years?