When Do People Want AI to Make Decisions?

AI systems are now or will soon be sophisticated enough to make consequential decisions. Although this technology has flourished, we also need public appraisals of AI systems playing these more important roles. This article reports surveys of preferences for and against AI systems making decisions in various domains as well as experiments that intervene on these preferences. We find that these preferences are contingent on subjects' previous exposure to computer systems making these kinds of decisions, and some interventions designed to mimic previous exposure successfully encourage subjects to be more hospitable to computer systems making these weighty decisions.