AI development is shaped by academics and industry leaders - let us call them “infuencers” - but it is unclear how their views align with those of the public. To address this gap, we developed an interactive platform that served as a data collection tool for exploring public views on AI, including their fears, hopes, and overall sense of hopefulness. We made the platform available to 330 participants representative of the U.S. population in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, and political leaning, and compared their views with those of 100 AI infuencers identifed by Time magazine. The public fears AI getting out of control, while infuencers emphasize regulation, seemingly to defect attention from their alleged focus on monetizing A’s potential. Interestingly, the views of AI infuencers from underrepresented groups such as women and people of color often differ from the views of underrepresented groups in the public.

:CCS Concepts: Human-centered computing - Empirical studies in HCI; Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing; HCI design and evaluation methods; Visualization systems and tools; Computing methodologies - Artifcial intelligence; Social and professional topics - Codes of ethics; Information systems - Crowdsourcing.

Keywords: responsible AI, ethical AI, AI governance, empirical ethics, value alignment, AI fears, AI hopes, AI infuencers, participatory AI ethics, crowdsourcing

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Moreira, G., Bogucka, E. P., Constantinides, M., Quercia, D., The Hall of AI Fears and Hopes: Comparing the Views of AI Influencers and those of Members of the U.S. Public Through an Interactive Platform, Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan, April 26th, 2025. https://chi2025.acm.org/