Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between public opinion of science and technology (S&T), government support to the Artificial intelligence (AI) sector, and AI startups across countries. By controlling for other macro determinants of business formation and applying OLS, Robust and 2SLS regressions, our results show that the number of AI startups is significantly higher in countries where the public has a less negative perception of S&T and where governments provide stronger support to the AI sector. In addition, we show that spiritual perception of S&T is more important than materialistic perception of S&T in explaining the cross-country differences in the number of AI startups. Finally, our results suggest that the availability of AI talent and financial development are positively correlated with a higher number of AI startups.