Artificial Intelligence, Morality, and Sentience (AIMS) Survey

Objective: The AIMS survey provides nationally representative survey data on attitudes towards AI safety, the moral consideration, social integration, and sentience of AIs. One purpose of the AIMS survey is to track how the public’s opinion on this topic changes over time. Another purpose is to provide data for any researchers to use to test their predictions. Methods: Nationally representative samples of U.S. adults were recruited with iSay/Ipsos, Dynata, Disqo, and other leading sample panels based on census estimates from the American Community Survey. Survey materials and hypotheses are available on the OSF (see "Citations and preregistrations"). Results: Some descriptive statistics and demographic information are in the supplemental results. Additional results are in Sentience Institute’s reports (https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/aims-survey). Conclusions: The AIMS survey data offer empirical evidence of how humans extend moral consideration to AIs who exist now and sentient AIs who may exist in the future. The data provide empirical evidence of social perceptions of AIs, attitudes towards AI safety and governance, perceived connectedness to AIs, and forecasts for future human-AI relations. These data serve to ground our expectations regarding U.S. public opinion on AIs and enable us to track how public opinion changes over time. Citations and preregistrations: This project was designed in 2021 by researchers at the Sentience Institute: Janet Pauketat, Ali Ladak, Jamie Harris, and Jacy Reese Anthis. Wave 1 (2021) was authored by this team and preregistered (https://osf.io/udbhm). The wave 2 (2023) main data was authored by Janet Pauketat, Ali Ladak, and Jacy Reese Anthis and preregistered (https://osf.io/w9h6g). The wave 2 (2023) supplement data was authored by Janet Pauketat and Jacy Reese Anthis and preregistered (https://osf.io/7p2wt).