People across the world are increasingly turning to AI for everyday tasks, from looking up recipes and doing their homework to researching work projects or making presentations.
But using AI every day doesn’t necessarily mean people are feeling comfortable with its implications for the world: About 68% of Americans who use AI daily are worried about it, according to a new survey conducted by opinion research firm Gallup, and concern about the tech skews even higher among people who use it less frequently.
Coming at a time of intense debate around the dangers of AI, quick developments around AI safety, the implications of AI going rogue, and accusations of anti-competitive behavior, these findings complicate the notion that adoption can serve as a straightforward measure of public enthusiasm for AI.
Commissioned by Microsoft, the Gallup study currently has results from 37 countries, where researchers polled about 1,000 people in each country between April and July. The project will eventually span 140 countries. Notably, India, a large population of tech users, is not currently part of the reported results, nor is Australia and Malaysia.
The findings appear to put the U.S. at the anxious end of an international chart even as people in other parts of the world expect the technology to improve their lives. According to Gallup, Western countries are most concerned about AI, with the United States leading in anxiety — 74% Americans reported feelings of worry, and only 36% expect AI to mostly help the country.
Other wealthy Western countries showed a similar mix of relatively frequent use and concern. In Canada, for example, 29% of those surveyed reported using AI daily, and of those, more than half expressed concerns about the impact of the technology. Overall, 64% of Canadians aware of AI said it worried them.
They’re likely not imagining it. There’s certainly been a growing wave of discontent around AI, with tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of employees in order to invest in AI, shrinking entry-level openings, life-ending cases of AI psychosis, and dire warnings from AI leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who have warned that the tech will wipe out jobs en masse.
The survey paints a different picture in the rest of the world, however. In Singapore, which had the highest portion of daily users in the study (46%), more than 80% of those aware about AI expect the tech to improve their everyday lives, and 77% think it’ll help the country. China, where 35% of people report using AI daily, most people expect it to help the country. The story is similar in Israel.
Still, optimism about AI doesn’t necessarily appear to translate to trust in the tech’s accuracy. According to Gallup, people who use AI daily were generally more trusting of its results, especially in high-adoption countries like Singapore, Israel and China, while less frequent users remain skeptical across the board. In the U.S., only 45% of daily users expressed that level of confidence. Altogether, only 36% (median) of the people surveyed said they trust AI’s results a lot.
Overall, though, Gallup reports that positivity about AI outweighs negative sentiments: In 34 of the 37 countries surveyed, people mostly reported feeling curious about the tech, with a fewer number saying they felt happy or excited. Only about 32% of those surveyed said they felt worried about AI. Positive emotions seem to be most common in China (90%), Singapore (89%) and Kenya (87%).
It’s not clear how much sentiment in some countries, especially China, might have changed since the survey ended in July, as the pace of AI development has lately burgeoned into a matter of international importance. AI safety is one of the major topics on the table for discussion when U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jingping meet on Thursday.
Notably, China’s head of the Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, wrote in a recent article that AI will have “a systemic impact on the political and security environment,” and could threaten China’s “political security, institutional security, and ideological security.”
“One of the clearest findings is that attitudes toward AI are multidimensional. People can be curious about AI, expect it to be beneficial and use it frequently while still being worried about it. Similarly, they can see considerable potential in AI while remaining skeptical about whether the information it provides is accurate,” Pablo Diego-Rosell, senior scientist at Gallup, told TechCrunch.
While the report paints a picture of optimism colored by some concern, it’s nevertheless true that AI worries are increasingly becoming part of public discourse. People who rely on AI for day-to-day tasks may end up supporting tougher rules or resisting its use in hiring, healthcare, education or government. And there’s certainly an argument to be made that training and serving AI models can harm the climate, and their unregulated use can disrupt cybersecurity, diminish content ownership, upset the creative arts fields, or harm data privacy.
At the end of the day, the report suggests that greater exposure alone will not resolve the unease around the technology. Still, given the amount of money that’s being invested, AI will likely continue proliferating even as disputes rage around where it belongs and what limits should be placed around it.
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