Amid general political divisiveness these days, it appears plenty of us would be happy to have robots make the tough decisions instead.

New research has claimed that a quarter of Europeans would rather trust artificial intelligence to make political choices than regular flesh and blood humans.

Although, worryingly, that same research highlights that over half (56%) of those quizzed fear that robots will replace human jobs.

It comes from Spain’s IE University which named the governance of new technologies alongside climate change as the biggest challenge the EU currently faces.


Could a machine make difficult political decisions better than humans? (Getty)

Diego Rubio, executive director of the university’s centre for the governance of change, said: ‘This mindset, which probably relates to the growing mistrust citizens feel towards governments and politicians, constitutes a significant questioning of the European model of representative democracy, since it challenges the very notion of popular sovereignty.’



According to other figures within the research, the UK, Netherlands and Germany raises trust in AI over politicians to one in three.

The report also suggests that 70% of those asked believe that without appropriate regulation, new technologies will cause more harm than good in society over the next decade.

Automation is already taking over plenty of manual jobs (Getty Images/Cultura RF)

‘The vast majority of Europeans expect their governments to set new laws and taxes to limit automation and prevent job displacement, even if that means slowing down economic progress,’ Mr Rubio said.

‘These results are consistent across countries, age groups, genders and, perhaps more surprisingly, ideologies. And yet, these kinds of measures are currently out of the political debate.’

It also claims that two thirds (68%) find it concerning that people will spend more time socialising online than in person in years to come.

The report – European Tech Insights 2019 – looked at the public attitude towards technology in eight countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and the UK.