Pew survey: 52% of Americans now more concerned than excited about AI

[Shawn Knight]

The takeaway: Artificial intelligence is seemingly everywhere these days, but public attitudes toward the technology are changing. For some, the excitement surrounding AI has given way to outright concern, but will the industry take notice and take steps to ease worry?

A recent report from the Pew Research Center reveals that more than half of US adults – 52%, to be exact – are "more concerned than excited" about the increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life. That is up from just 37% who answered the same way in 2021 when Pew first asked the question.

Only nine percent of those polled in 2026 said they were more excited than concerned over what AI brings to the table. Back in 2021, nearly one in five – 18% – said they were more excited than concerned. Roughly a third of the US adult population – 37% – said they were equally concerned and excited about AI.

Job loss is a leading worry among concerned citizens. In the latest survey, which was conducted June 22-28 of this year, 71% of Americans said they believe AI will lead to fewer jobs for humans over the next 20 years. When the same question was asked two years ago, only 64% of Americans thought AI would lead to less jobs in the workforce.

Only five percent of respondents were optimistic on the topic and believe AI will lead to more jobs for humans in the next two decades.

Also interesting is the fact that age no longer seems to play a role in this question, as worry about job loss now shows up across all polled demographics. Younger people, however, have their own concerns with AI.

As recent studies have shown, younger adults tend to view AI negatively overall and feel it could hamper creativity and their ability to foster relationships. In a September 2025 Pew study, 61% of young adults said AI could harm their ability to think creatively and 43% felt it would make solving problems more difficult.

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Pew survey: 52% of Americans now more concerned than excited about AI

 

[jwdR311]

Get with the program folks! Just listen to it and do what it says. Trust it, you'll be fine.

My wife is working to get her teaching certificate right now. It surprising how hard they are pushing AI in the classrooms. Won't be long and AI will be replacing the teachers.

 

[QuaZulu]

Interesting (as much as I believe statistics!). And yet Americans consume voraciously for ourselves what we say we fear and condemn corporately. Somehow that story repeats itself over and over...

 

[umeng2002]

All this concern for something that doesn't really work well.

 

[OortCloud]

Meanwhile a whole gaggle of sociopathic-tech-bro-social-misfits carry on regardless, not giving a sh1t about their fellow human beings while they destroy the planet. Hoovering up resources, burning through carbon and stealing/leeching every resource either physical or on the internet they can with absolutely zero thought or planning (or care) for where this might end.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Title: 52% of Americans now more concerned than excited about AI
Reality: 99% of writers are outright anti-AI because LLMs will probably relegate them

 

[NumberNine]

It's not the technology that concerns me. It's the psychopathic antisocial methods of acquiring revenue through it, and the complete disregard for humanity repeatedly exhibited by the corporations driving the trend. Intent is everything here.

 

[Eflow]

If AI is really successful then we will experience worse unemployment than we've seen since the 1920's.

If AI is really unsuccessful then the stock market will tank and the U.S. will fall into a recession.

And what happens if AI is mildly successful? Probably a combination of job losses and a smaller stock market correction.

It feels like there is no happy ending here for the macro economy.

 

[Hecate91]

Reality: 99.9999% of AI apologists always miss the point in these threads.

It's the narcissistic AI tech bros high on some illicit drugs that are the problem with AI, it's not just being used as a helpful tool, it's being used to destroy quality of life for everyone with nobody stopping to think what the consequences are of replacing workers and putting up datacenters as quickly as possible.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Reality: 99.9999% of AI apologists always miss the point in these threads.

It's the narcissistic AI tech bros high on some illicit drugs that are the problem with AI, it's not just being used as a helpful tool, it's being used to destroy quality of life for everyone with nobody stopping to think what the consequences are of replacing workers and putting up datacenters as quickly as possible.

Reality: hystronic luddites will decry every technology as destroying everything they love.

You still cry about hard drive prices from 2011, despite none of your doom and gloom every coming to fruition.

You'll be crying about AI until your last day, and the world will move on regardless.

 

[Hecate91]

Reality: AI apologists will call anyone not on the AI koolaid luddites. Come up with something creative and new, at least. Maybe consult your favorite AI model.
The point with complaining about things like HDD pricing, is prices went up then never returned to normal. Now that's happening to everything with AI being used as the excuse.
I know the response is going to be "well just don't be poor". Well that's nice then you can keep on happily opening your wallet and paying more, but the reality is the price of necessary and luxury goods is outpacing wages for a majority of people, greedflation and ensh*ttification is accelerating the cost of everything going up even faster because corporations only care about the line going higher and higher every year.

 

[OortCloud]

Title: 52% of Americans now more concerned than excited about AI
Reality: 99% of writers are outright anti-AI because LLMs will probably relegate them

But surely that's a bad thing isn't it? Do you really want a regurgitation-machine to write for you? I don't. It might come up with something quite good, I'm still not interested. I want my fiction, art, music, customer support, games, taxi rides, youtube videos etc etc to built by and operated by people. AI can grind away developing vaccines or denoising video etc etc, doing things only a machine can really do. I don't want it replacing people in roles they often spent their lives learning. I don't want all that money and expertise stolen and then hoovered up by a tiny few people to profit by at everybody else's expense.

 

[pnntmp]

Those 52% are the less informed and susceptible to gaslighting half.

The "leading worry", job loss, is obviously not happening despite the constant fearmongering. Unemployment rates are flat and very low, close to all time historical lows. Occupations that should have disappeared due to AI according to 'experts', like software engineers, radiologists etc., have a notable increase in job openings.

People being worried about AI does not mean there's a problem with AI, that's merely a result of targeted hysteria -spreading campaigns. Not long ago plenty of people were worried about "climate change", a non-negligible portion is still worried ...

 

[hahahanoobs]

People say this about every new advancement.

It got old decades ago, yet here we are.

 

[Vanderlinde]

Meanwhile a whole gaggle of sociopathic-tech-bro-social-misfits carry on regardless, not giving a sh1t about their fellow human beings while they destroy the planet. Hoovering up resources, burning through carbon and stealing/leeching every resource either physical or on the internet they can with absolutely zero thought or planning (or care) for where this might end.

It has been a race to the bottom for a while.

It's only a few select who will actually be, winners. I mean Ai is going to stay - there is absolutely no doubt about it. The question is more do we keep it sustainable.

Global warming is 100% caused by this ****. All that power required is indirect pushed into the atmosphere as waste heat.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

But surely that's a bad thing isn't it? Do you really want a regurgitation-machine to write for you? I don't. It might come up with something quite good, I'm still not interested.

Isn't that what most journalism we read is? The vast majority of news you read has no original research. It's stringing together a few sources and rephrasing what others have written to save on syndication fees. But what's worse is, articles like this one are single source rewrites. There's absolutely no analysis or questioning. I already have to look at the source usually because it often includes context that's left out by the author. Then I come into the comments and add here.

The vast majority of controversial news is an author almost lying to readers because they left out important context. Have you ever heard of the song "Dirty Laundry"? Every time I listen to it, I think about the news today.

 

[pnntmp]

Global warming is 100% caused by this ****. All that power required is indirect pushed into the atmosphere as waste heat.

You've heard about that thing called "the Sun" in school, I presume?
You may have even seen it.

The total humanity energy generation and consumption from all machinery, electricity, fuel etc. is less than one-ten-thousandth (0.01%) of the sun's power hitting Earth.
Simply put, what we do doesn't even register.

 

[Hecate91]

It has been a race to the bottom for a while.

It's only a few select who will actually be, winners. I mean Ai is going to stay - there is absolutely no doubt about it. The question is more do we keep it sustainable.

Global warming is 100% caused by this ****. All that power required is indirect pushed into the atmosphere as waste heat.

Sustainable or not, the AI tech bros will keep the circular investment going somehow, the scam should've gotten shut down over a year ago if the regulators and politicians weren't also insider trading.

Global warming is becoming more obvious with extreme temperatures, more severe storms, though some will keep choosing to ignore it until it's too late.

 

[OortCloud]

You've heard about that thing called "the Sun" in school, I presume?
You may have even seen it.

The total humanity energy generation and consumption from all machinery, electricity, fuel etc. is less than one-ten-thousandth (0.01%) of the sun's power hitting Earth.
Simply put, what we do doesn't even register.

It's comments like this that really bring home just how screwed we really are as a species. How can you have so little understanding of an issue like global warming and still feel justified to pipe up with this nonsense? I knew from the smartass way this reply started that we were all in for some real bottom-feeder levels of ignorance - 'you've heard about this thing called the sun', but it exceeded even my expectations with it's stupidity.

We are not heating the earth directly with the energy we consume but that energy consumption produces carbon dioxide which is filling the atmosphere. This causes the heat from that thing call "The Sun" to become trapped. How can you still not understand this when it is such a huge issue now and so obviously happening you utter m0ron?
God help us all!