Australians Say Knowing When to Trust AI Matters More Than Knowing How It Works

A community panel on artificial intelligence has found that everyday Australians see good judgement as more valuable than technical expertise. The Community Panel on AI brought together 25 participants aged 19 to 68. It was hosted by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at Swinburne University of Technology, in collaboration with Telstra. Participants described "AI discernment" as the ability to decide when, how and whether to use AI, including the confidence to question or reject its outputs.

Participants said AI is hard to avoid at work, in education and in everyday services, such as website chatbots and search engines that provide AI-generated summaries. Two thirds reported feeling pressure to either use or avoid AI, and two thirds had disagreed with others about its use. Reliability and deception were major concerns. People struggled to assess AI-generated answers and worried about AI-generated images, video and audio being used for impersonation and scams. Many said they were no longer confident they could tell whether media had been created or altered using AI, which affects how they treat online content and messages from unfamiliar sources.

Interest in learning is strong: almost all participants said they would attend public AI learning events. However, nearly half did not know where to find local opportunities, and many currently rely on informal sources such as friends, colleagues, social media and AI tools themselves.