Americans feel way more worried than excited about AI: Poll

Americans feel much more worried than excited about the prevalence of artificial intelligence in society, according to an Athena Insights poll released Tuesday.

The poll, first reported by The Hill, shows that 28% of respondents felt “very concerned” about AI’s “growing role” in U.S. society. Meanwhile, 37% were “somewhat concerned” about the technology, 6% said they were “very excited,” and 18% were “somewhat excited” about it, per the survey.

Just 1% of participants did not have a response regarding their view of AI’s role in society, compared to 9% who said the survey’s options did not closely align with how they feel about AI, The Hill reported.

“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,” Athena Insights Research Lead Colin Hyatt Bortner told The Hill on Monday.

Roughly 70% of respondents said AI is now a part of their lives whether they want it to be or not and 15% said that “people like me can shape how much AI is part of our lives,” the survey shows. By comparison, 14% reported that neither answer matches how they feel, and 2% had no response, according to the poll.

The survey found that about 70% of respondents said they are having difficulty telling what is actually real due to AI. The poll also suggests that by almost 20 percentage points, more respondents do not believe the U.S. government is currently doing enough to address the potential impacts AI has on children and youths, the environment, employees and jobs.

“If you’re having kind of a big, public policy fight [about AI], when push comes to shove, it’s much more helpful if you have the public on your side and then that helps you figure out how you position yourself, how you argue,” Bornter told the outlet.

The newly released polling comes as AI-related concerns have been mounting among Americans. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released June 10 shows that half of Americans are worried that AI could leave them or someone in their household jobless.

The widespread adoption of AI across the U.S. has been creating headaches for some young professionals with college degrees who are having difficulty finding entry-level job opportunities, CNBC reported in May.

Analysts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that AI tools cannot yet replace certain skills from human workers outright.

The latest Athena Insights poll was conducted among 1,814 Americans from June 24-29. The survey’s results have a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

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