Researchers have found that showing people AI images of what sustainable cities with fewer cars and more space for pedestrians could look like increases support for a supposed bill changing America’s infrastructure.journal found that showing people AI-generated images of American cities that depend less on cars and more on public transport and cycling garners more support for sustainable transportation policies.
Participants were shown photos of Austin now and what it potentially could look like via an AI image . When delving further into the data, researchers found that AI images had the biggest effect on Republican voters. The participants were asked to rate the bill from one to ten. Voters of the GOP gave the bill a rating of 3.7 when shown words like “bikeable” and 3.5 when shown the basic illustration. However, when shown the AI images that rating jumped to 4.8.
“By constructing these kinds of visualizations, to me, that helps to bring people onto the same page,” Rahul Bhui, a co-author of the study and an assistant marketing professor who studies behavioral economics at MIT, tells. “Maybe a shared vision of what it could look like, that is not as controversial.” The study’s co-authors also included Thomas Griffiths and Mathew Hardy, researchers at Princeton University.