Despite the fact that AI is increasingly dominating our nation’s economy (it’s the hot summer of IPOs and we’re all on board), most Americans aren’t particularly optimistic about the technology’s long-term impact on the country, a new Pew Research survey finds.
In fact, even though many Americans are using AI in their daily lives, research shows that most have neutral or negative beliefs about AI.
According to Pew, only 16% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society over the next 20 years, while about 40% think it will have a negative impact.
A majority of people (67%) do not believe the U.S. government will do anything to meaningfully regulate AI. A similarly skeptical cohort (59%) do not trust companies to develop securely.
Young people, people under 30, have the most negative feelings about AI. Only 14% of this group believes the technology will have a positive impact on society, according to Pew.
On top of all this, a majority of Americans, nearly two-thirds, think AI is developing too quickly.
Despite this skepticism, many Americans report using AI in their daily lives more and more frequently. About a quarter of Americans say they use AI chatbots on a daily basis. People who use chatbots typically do so for research purposes or work, Pugh said.
The vast majority of people using AI use ChatGPT. Pew wrote that 44% of U.S. adults now say they use an OpenAI chatbot, a number that has more than doubled since 2023.
The next most popular chatbot is Gemini (24%), followed by Copilot (17%) and Meta AI (14%), followed by Grok (8%), Claude (6%), and Character.ai (3%).
There is some gender discrimination. Chatbot use is increasing among both men and women, but men still use AI more and are more enthusiastic about it, while women are more skeptical, Pugh says. Men are more likely to say they use AI chatbots in their daily lives (27% vs. 20% women), and an equal number of men and women report using ChatGPT, but men are more likely to report using other brands such as Copilot and Grok.
The report also highlights how AI is changing the way Americans consume information. Six out of 10 survey respondents told Pew that they routinely read AI-generated internet summaries (in fact, at Google, summaries are almost unavoidable). There are far fewer reports of using AI to obtain information about fitness and diet.
Additionally, many people, around half of the country, say they do not use AI in their daily lives. People who don’t use AI tend to be older, and people under 50 are more likely to say they use AI. Almost 75% of Americans over 65 say they would never use an AI chatbot.
People who don’t use chatbots say they don’t use them because they’re not interested in them, adding that they don’t plan to use them in the future.
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