Designing for trust: A conjoint experiment on citizens’ support of regulatory regimes for ensuring trust in Artificial Intelligence

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems is becoming increasingly prevalent in many areas based on a vast range of applications. AI systems promise to increase effectiveness and efficiency of private and public services through automation and to improve decision-making processes. However, it has become evident that AI systems can be biased and lead to discriminatory outcomes. In other words, AI systems cannot be blindly trusted to perform well and create output that we deem morally acceptable. At the same time, trust in AI systems is a crucial precondition for the uptake of these systems. If the public does not deem them trustworthy, they will be reluctant to accept and use them and may lose trust in actors that employ them – be they businesses or public organizations. Yet, the vast majority of citizens do not have the capacity – neither the expertise nor the access to information – to evaluate AI systems themselves. Instead, they will depend on intermediaries (i.e. regulators) to effectively monitor and evaluate AI systems and to enforce compliance with AI regulation. It may thus be citizens’ perceptions of AI regulators rather than of the AI systems themselves that matters for whether citizens trust AI systems. In this paper, we are examining which type of regulatory regime citizens expect to most effectively regulate AI systems and their uses. The study provides insight into which regulatory regimes citizens of different member states prefer to regulate AI. We research this with a choice-based conjoint experiment that lets respondents evaluate different regulatory arrangements with varied stakeholder involvement. We also examine how segments of the populations differ in the constellation of stakeholder involvement that they prefer and what kind and intensity of regulator involvement that they value the most. The pre-registered experiment is fielded among a representative sample of the citizens of four EU countries: Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, and Sweden.