  As Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly influences various aspects of
society, there is growing public interest in its potential benefits and risks.
In this paper we present results of public perception of AI from a survey
conducted with 10,000 respondents spanning ten countries in four continents
around the world. The results show that currently an equal percentage of
respondents who believe AI will change the world as we know it, also believe AI
needs to be heavily regulated. However, our findings also indicate that despite
the general sentiment among the global public that AI will replace workers, if
a company were to use AI to innovate to improve lives, the public would be more
likely to think highly of the company, purchase from them and even be
interested in a job in that company. Our results further reveal that the global
public largely views AI as a tool for problem solving. These nuanced results
underscore the importance of AI directed towards challenges that the public
would like science and technology-based innovations to address. We draw on a
multi-year 3M study of public perception of science to provide further context
on what the public perceives as important problems to be solved.
