Managing the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Perceived Risks and Social Policy Preferences Among Firm-Level Decision Makers

This paper examines the political and policy implications of artificial intelligence (AI) from the perspective of managers in Danish firms. We investigate how managers perceive AI's impact on the workplace, their preferences for social and regulatory policies to address AI's societal effects, and how information about AI's economic consequences and regulation influences these preferences. Utilising a novel firm-level survey in Denmark with experimental treatments, we find that firms perceiving AI-related risks are more likely to support AI regulation and social investment (education and upskilling). Firms with extensive AI experience are more likely to oppose AI regulation but, paradoxically, are more likely to express concern about AI. They also tend to prefer social investment over compensation policies. While information treatments partly increased firms' expression of concern about AI, they did not significantly alter their policy preferences. Overall, our findings indicate that subjective AI risk and AI experience significantly influence managers' policy preferences, leading to a general preference for social investment over compensation, with firms expressing concern supporting regulation and those with extensive AI experience opposing it.