---
id: "claim-low-literacy-perception"
type: "claim"
source_timestamps: ["¶3"]
tags: ["consumer-perception", "ai-ethics"]
related: ["concept-ai-receptivity-paradox", "contrarian-negative-perception-high-usage", "quote-perception-vs-usage"]
confidence: "high"
testable: true
speakers: ["Chiara Longoni", "Gil Appel", "Stephanie M. Tully"]
sources: ["adoption"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-adoption"
originDay: 9
articleStem: "hbr-edu-39-understanding-ai-not-embrace"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/07/why-understanding-ai-doesnt-necessarily-lead-people-to-embrace-it"
sourceTitle: "Why Understanding AI Doesn’t Necessarily Lead People to Embrace It"
---
# Low-literacy users view AI as less capable and more ethically concerning

**Claim (confidence: high, testable):** The increased interest in AI among low-literacy individuals is *not* driven by a belief in AI's superiority. Studies show that people with lower AI literacy actually perceive AI as **less capable** and harbor **more ethical concerns** about it than high-literacy individuals do. Despite these negative rational assessments, their actual usage — and their desire for others to use AI — remains higher.

This is the crux of the [[concept-ai-receptivity-paradox]]: negative appraisal coexists with higher adoption, captured in [[quote-perception-vs-usage]] and generalized as the contrarian insight [[contrarian-negative-perception-high-usage]].

> **Validation (enrichment): Partially supported / conceptually consistent.** The [[entity-org-gw-trustworthy-ai-initiative]] states the finding was "not for the reasons one might suspect, like differences in perceptions of AI's capability, ethicality, or feared impact on humanity" — i.e., those judgments do *not* explain the higher receptivity. Adjacent PLOS One work on the **AI trust paradox** shows people support AI even when trust is low, paralleling "negative perception yet higher usage," though framed around *trust* rather than *literacy*.