Despite the fact that AI is increasingly dominating our economy (it’s hot IPO summer and we’re all just along for the ride), most Americans aren’t particularly optimistic about the technology’s long-term impact on the country, a new Pew Research survey reveals.
In fact, even though a whole lot of Americans are increasingly using artificial intelligence in their daily lives, most of them have neutral to negative attitudes toward it, the research reveals.
Only 16 percent of Americans believe AI’s impact on society over the next 20 years will be positive, Pew says, while about 40 percent say it will have a negative impact.
A large majority of people (67 percent) do not think the US government will do anything to meaningfully regulate artificial intelligence. A similarly skeptical cohort (59 percent) does not trust companies to develop it safely.
Young people – that is, the people under 30 – are the ones with the most negative feelings about AI. Pew says only 14 percent of this cohort believe the technology will have a positive impact on society.
On top of all this, a large majority of Americans – nearly two-thirds – also believe that AI’s development is happening too quickly.
Despite all the skepticism, a whole lot of Americans also report that they use AI in their daily lives on an increasingly regular basis. About a quarter of Americans say they use AI chatbots on a daily basis. Those who do typically use chatbots for research purposes or for work, Pew says.
A large majority of people who use AI use ChatGPT. Pew writes that 44 percent of American adults now say they use OpenAI’s chatbot, a number that has more than doubled since 2023.
The second most popular chatbot is Gemini (24 percent), followed by Copilot (17 percent) and MetaAI (14 percent), with Grok (8 percent), Claude (6 percent) and Character.ai (3 percent) trailing behind.
There is a bit of a gender distribution. While chatbot use is growing for both men and women, men still use AI more and are more enthusiastic about it, while women are more skeptical, Pew says. Men are more likely to say they use AI chatbots in their daily lives (27 percent vs. 20 percent for men), and while equal shares of men and women report using ChatGPT, men more commonly report using other brands, such as Copilot and Grok.
The report also highlights how artificial intelligence is changing the way Americans consume information. Six in ten survey respondents told Pew they routinely read AI-generated internet summaries (in fact, on Google, they’re pretty much unavoidable). A much smaller number of reports use AI to obtain information about fitness and dieting.
There are also still a whole lot of people — about half the country — who say they do not use AI in their daily lives. The people who don’t use AI tend to be older, while those under 50 are more likely to say they use it. Nearly 75 percent of Americans age 65 or older say they never use AI chatbots.
The people who do not use chatbots say that they do not because they are not interested in them, adding that they do not intend to use them in the future.
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