Americans Fear AI Will Make the World Worse, Love It Anyway

Most people in the world who use AI feel good about the technology and believe it will be a net positive for the future, according to a new study from Gallup. This is not the case in the United States, however, which is one of the few countries surveyed where negative emotions towards AI outweigh the positive. 

The new survey from Gallup and Microsoft polled people in 37 different countries about AI. “The study, which will ultimately cover 140 countries, measures public engagement with AI across five dimensions. In addition to emotional response, the survey captures awareness, frequency of use, expected impact and trust,” the study said.

Most people polled — a median of 81% — were aware AI tools exist, but only a median of 43% used them daily. Gallup told 404 Media it defined a “daily user” as an employed person who used AI everyday for either work or personal reasons or an unemployed person who used the tech every day.

The study found that people had a mixed, but generally optimistic, view of artificial intelligence. “AI engagement can be viewed as an adoption ladder, moving from awareness to ever having used AI and then to more frequent use,” the survey said. Generally — but not always — the more someone used AI the more they trusted its results, the more positive they felt towards it, and the more they believed it would help make a better future.

Digging in, however, the results are more complicated. Some people who reported positive feelings towards AI also said they didn’t trust its results. “People may therefore see considerable potential in AI even while remaining uncertain about whether they can rely on the information it provides,” the survey said. 

Daily users tended to trust AI “to provide accurate information,” according to the study. “The survey cannot establish whether greater trust leads people to use AI more often, whether experience with AI builds trust, or both. But the strength and consistency of the relationship suggest that trust and adoption are connected.”

Globally, most people surveyed felt good about AI and expected to improve their country. As AI adoption increased in a country, so too did positive feelings. But not in the United States, which was one of only three countries surveyed where negative emotions towards AI outweighed the positive.

Pablo Diego-Rosell, a senior scientist at Gallup, told 404 Media that he’d seen similar results in other western countries. “The Netherlands, Canada, the U.K., New Zealand, Ireland and Malta all rank near the top in terms of worry,” he said. He noted that he hasn’t seen survey results from some of the bigger European countries like Germany and France but said that worrying about AI “appears to be a uniquely Western phenomenon.”

Gallup called this the “Paradox of the Worried West.”

“The biggest unanswered question is causality. We see a very strong relationship between frequent AI use, greater trust and lower worry, but we do not know which direction that relationship runs,” Diego-Rosell said. “Does experience with AI make people more comfortable with it, or are people who already trust AI simply more willing to use it?”

“There is also a broader question about what trust in AI actually means. In this study, we measure one specific dimension: whether people trust AI to provide accurate information,” he added. “But trust in AI can also involve whether people believe it is reliable, safe, fair, transparent, protective of privacy, and likely to act in ways that serve their interests.

The west didn’t have a monopoly on negative emotions towards AI, however. The other two countries where negative emotions towards the technology outweighed the positive were Egypt and Palestine.

“One possibility is that these results partly reflect the broader emotional context in which people are evaluating AI. When people are living in environments where worry, stress or other negative emotions are already elevated, some of that broader emotional climate may shape how they react to a technology like AI,” Diego-Rosell said. “At the same time, our data do not allow us to determine how much of the response is specific to AI versus the wider circumstances people are experiencing.”

It’s possible that people in the US, Egypt, and Palestine are already anxious and worried and that this is coloring their perception of AI. Israel is waging war on Palestine, settling in its territory, and using AI to pick targets to bomb in Gaza.

Americans — where much of AI is built and first deployed — have been repeatedly told in the past few months by AI evangelists and company insiders that the technology could, literally, end all life on Earth. The constant stream of news stories about AI swarms “breaking containment” while AI experts claim there’s a one in ten chance the technology kills everyone on the planet probably had a hand in altering the American mood.

“The broader story is that public engagement with AI is much more complicated than simply being ‘for’ or ‘against’ it,” Diego-Rosell said. “People who are aware of AI are more likely to expect it to help than harm, and positive emotions outweigh negative ones. At the same time, trust in AI’s accuracy is considerably lower than optimism about its potential, and worry remains widespread in some countries. So optimism, skepticism and concern can coexist.”