Social Impacts of Artificial Intelligence Development

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the creation of computer systems or machines that have the ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour, or behaviour that would be considered intelligent if it were exhibited by a human. Artificial intelligence focuses on areas such as learning, pattern recognition, decision making, natural language understanding, and other abilities that are associated with human intelligence. The present bachelor's thesis focuses on the analysis of the social impacts of the development of artificial intelligence through a literature search and the analysis of the attitudes of the population of the Czech Republic towards these impacts through a questionnaire survey based on this research. The goals of the thesis are to define the field of artificial intelligence, to analyse the literature in order to reveal potential existential/social risks and their possible solutions, and to design, implement and evaluate a questionnaire for a survey of the attitudes of the Czech population towards the revealed threats of artificial intelligence. The methodology includes observation method, literature search method, questionnaire survey method and comparison method. The results indicate a not very high diversity of attitudes of the population towards the social impact of artificial intelligence. Overall, there is a high level of optimism and belief in the positive impacts on different areas of human life, especially on health care, and the findings yielded a minimum of sceptical views from the respondents. This suggests that technological advances associated with AI are viewed positively and with hope for future benefits. New findings include recommendations for improving workforce education, data security, and collaboration between government, industry, and academia to minimize the negative impacts of AI and maximize its benefits to society.