Harvard Business Review: “Artificial intelligence has become an invisible assistant, quietly shaping how we search, scroll, shop, and work. It drafts our emails, curates our feeds, and increasingly guides decisions in education, healthcare, and the workplace. As companies increasingly integrate AI into their products and services, a critical but often overlooked question emerges: Why do some people embrace AI enthusiastically while others seem more hesitant? In a new paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Marketing, we uncovered a surprising pattern: The more knowledge people have about AI and how it works, the less likely they are to embrace it. This pattern emerged when we combined two datasets: one measuring cross-country AI literacy (based on levels of “AI talent” assessed by Tortoise Media) and another measuring country-level interest in using AI (from Ipsos). People in countries with lower average AI literacy tended to be more open to adopting AI compared to those in countries with higher literacy levels. Then, across six additional studies involving thousands of U.S.-based participants—including undergraduate students and online samples selected to be representative of the U.S. in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and regional distribution—we consistently found that lower AI literacy predicts greater receptivity to AI. Our studies found that the greater interest in AI wasn’t because people with less knowledge thought AI was more capable or more ethical. Quite the opposite: People with lower AI literacy saw AI as less capable and more ethically concerning. Yet, they were more likely to have used it themselves and to want it used by others. What explains this surprising finding? It comes down to the way people perceive AI. For those who know less about AI, envisioning AI completing tasks feels magical and awe-inspiring. This sense of “magic” fuels enthusiasm. But for those with higher AI literacy, who understand the mechanics—algorithms, data training, computational models—AI loses its mystique. Much like learning how a magic trick works, this knowledge strips away the wonder. With it, the interest in using AI fades…”