Poll Finds 65% of Americans Concerned and 24% Excited About AI's Growing Role

A new biweekly survey found Americans nearly three times as likely to say they are concerned rather than excited about artificial intelligence’s growing role in society. The “Americans on AI” poll conducted by Athena Insights surveyed 1,814 people from June 24 to 29 and carried a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they were very concerned and 37 percent said they were somewhat concerned.

The Hill reported that results were similar across political parties. Seventy percent of respondents said AI is coming into their lives whether they want it or not.

Fifteen percent said people like them can shape how much AI is part of their lives. Seventy percent also said they are struggling to distinguish what is real because of AI. By nearly 20 percentage points more respondents said the government is not doing enough to address AI’s effects on children and young people, the environment, and workers and jobs.

Democrats were 21 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say the government is not doing enough to help workers and 19 points more likely on the environment. Republicans and Democrats largely agreed that AI is worsening job security. The survey is fielded at NORC at the University of Chicago in partnership with Early Studies, a London-based market research firm.

Colin Hyatt Bortner, research lead for Athena Insights, said the effort aims to track opinion changes over time rather than capture a single snapshot. “We tried to develop a very neutral instrument on the theory that to the extent that AI is having an impact on people, and that impact is negative, that will then show up in the data, and then that will drive a policy response,” Bortner said.