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Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

399 points by karakoram 4mo ago

lbrito 4mo ago
Must be missing some zeroes. There's no way that AI techbros and major shareholders are 16% of the US. Must be more like .0016%.
- danielbln 4mo ago
  Not everyone who likes something that you don't like is an X-bro, so maybe that clears things up.
cryo32 4mo ago
The pushback I see everywhere outside of tech suggests the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet as much as it likes to think it does.
- operatingthetan 4mo ago
  It's to the point where if you drop an AI meme or screenshot of text in chat people will mock you. I don't see that getting better?
  - aspenmartin 4mo ago
    Does it need to?
    - pesus 4mo ago
      If anything, it should continue and apply to anyone using AI.
    - operatingthetan 4mo ago
      nope!
  - munk-a 4mo ago
    Memes have associations, connotations, subtleties in how they're used in different contexts - they're a communication medium. A well applied meme is like (it isn't - but it can be viewed similarly to) poetry where you've matched your idea with an evocative statement to a perfect degree and the subtleties and implications in your head are well and fully transferred to the reader. An AI meme is like a dry technical paper that lays out all of the information in a kludgy unimaginative manner. Good meme based communication relies on a lot of audience understanding and can draw people together as a demonstration of kinship.
    - operatingthetan 4mo ago
      I mean I can make a good meme with AI but it requires effort to ensure it is indistinguishable from a homegrown meme.
- baron816 4mo ago
  I really think there’s a concerted effort by the media to demonize AI though. Every third story I see on my news feeds is some sensationalist story about how AI/data centers are bad. The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block.
  - willis936 4mo ago
    The media are followers here, not leaders. 84% of people can't agree on the color blue[0]. Don't try to make excuses for a few billionaires finding the limit of their reality distortion field. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4921196/#:~:text=A%20color%20percept,bias%20for%20colors https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4921196/#:~:text=A%...
  - esseph 4mo ago
    > I really think there’s a concerted effort by the media to demonize AI though That sounds literally insane to me. This is not coming from the media, many of the same people that own the media have a vested interest in this particular US political administration... which is also basically all of big tech.
  - alpha_squared 4mo ago
    > The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block. Maybe, but it's also pretty clear that the entire purpose and intent of delivering "AI" to the economy is to wholly wipe out labor. Do I think that's realistic? No. SpaceX's total addressable market (TAM) in their S-1 filing to go public stated as much. Their TAM is $28.5T(!) with $26.5T of it being AI. That's larger than the US GDP (~$24T). You can only throw numbers like that around if you're explicitly aiming to replace labor, no matter how realistic it is. Personally, I'm tired of mediocre people who've attained some amount of business success turning around and trying to dismantle democratic systems because it's incompatible with their world view. It's more than reasonable to complain about these things night and day. The alternative to vocal complaints won't be pretty.
    - baron816 4mo ago
- aspenmartin 4mo ago
  Frontier model companies aren’t banking on the general public “wanting” AI. They are on a path to a product that won’t need to be wanted because the entire economy will need it.
  - nozzlegear 4mo ago
    Well, they hope they are on such a path.
    - aspenmartin 4mo ago
      Yes but what evidence is there that they aren’t? To me, scaling laws and empirical benchmark trends along with high adoption (all of this together, not individually) strongly support this, and also coding agents have become load bearing so it’s sort of already happening I would say.
      - geerlingguy 4mo ago
        I think that's an optimistic take; the load bearing portion hasn't permeated traditional development. Like so many things popular on HN, the tools that are here are great aids for good development processes and practitioners... but they are not actually replacing them in applications that will exist after the AI bubble deflates.
      - nozzlegear 4mo ago
        I don't disagree that coding agents have high adoption when it comes to software, but I do disagree that there's high adoption outside of this industry. There's no breakthrough "Claude Code but for non-tech industries" product out there that people are picking up in droves. My brother-in-law isn't using AI to manage his construction business, for example, and my sister isn't using it to run her non-profit daycare. The most AI usage I've seen from my wife and family is when they take pictures of our/their lawns and houses, then use ChatGPT to reimagine them with different landscaping ideas or paint trims.
  - ForHackernews 4mo ago
- AngryData 4mo ago
  I think the tech industry is overestimating its value. Because it can code they think it can do anything else, but unlike code a lot of other work can't have a bunch of little bugs and mistakes because you can't open up real life and edit it after the fact. Plus it lacks actual reasoning to solve novel problems. Hiring an engineer to finetooth comb blueprints for mistakes before construction will take nearly as much time as having an engineer draft them themselves. And they will be smart enough to not do something silly like putting the electrical panel on the back of the shower wall. If you just vibecode some blueprints and start construction without the comb you could lose way more than you saved with something as simple as pouring a support pillar or building a wall 2 inches off and having to tear it out later and rebuild.
  - manoDev 4mo ago
    Definitely. The secret will be identifying use cases where AI usage is a potential upside with limited downside, not the current blanket statements about replacing all jobs without considering lifetime ROI. There’s a lot of boring work AI can automate with minimal risk. There’s also the potential to decrease risk with AI too, including ensembles of different AIs modals and AI + human.
    - munk-a 4mo ago
      A human that hand-compiles 10,000 lines of C code is a very silly person. A human that works on device drivers and drops into assembly code for a dozen highly critical lines to enable real time communication can be irreplaceable. AI is a tool that can be highly useful and it's a tool with a number of large flaws that you need to acknowledge and account for. Knowing when it's worth using is a vital skill.
    - bwestergard 4mo ago
      "There’s a lot of boring work AI can automate with minimal risk. There’s also the potential to decrease risk with AI too, including ensembles of different AIs modals and AI + human." I think the trouble, economically speaking, is that while it will be possible from a purely technical standpoint to unbundle a job performed by a human into separate tasks, many of which can be "done" by agents, the new process will not present a cost savings overall once the entire lifecycle of the task is taken into account. The economist David Autor has written about these challenges extensively, and his theory accords with my experiences.
- tennfown 4mo ago
  There needs to be a brutal humbling
  - cryo32 4mo ago
    Definitely. That'll have to come through economic instruments though rather than failure.
- spprashant 4mo ago
  Not ever profession has an insatiable desire to automate away their own jobs.
- karakoram 4mo ago
  I have said this before, I just can NOT understand how you can measure adoption of a technology or product without giving people a full opt-out. This is very basic in technology products. It is very easy to say that Gmail AI product has 1.8 Billion users because there are about 1.8 Billion Gmail accounts/users and they have absolutely no way of completely opting out. (opting out without the company punishing users by taking away important features) A simple A/B Test with just 50,000 or 100,000 users depending on the product will give everyone the REAL picture of where users stand.
- zombot 4mo ago
  > the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. You should consider that the industry is just lying to make everyone believe that everyone else is interested. Creating a sense of inevitability. It's the same trick that every ad out there uses, selling you a profitable fantasy as reality.
- atleastoptimal 4mo ago
  They didn't overestimate the interest. ChatGPT is extremely popular and notable. >The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet Of course they don't, but they are still allowed to make a product, and pivot if there's no consumer demand. However there is huge consumer and business demand for AI so they are justified in making the investments they are.
  - cryo32 4mo ago
    Not quite. They don't operate like that. It is not ok to lobby and manipulate governments for fiscal policy changes to write off the costs and risks on the general public. We MUST be entirely insulated from their failure as society. If they can't raise the capital for the product then they should fail quietly and insignificantly which is not what is going to happen at the moment.
    - CamperBob2 4mo ago
      It is not ok to lobby and manipulate governments for fiscal policy changes to write off the costs and risks on the general public. Right now they have to lobby and manipulate the government just to keep from being shut down on a mad king's whim. A mad king elected and re-elected by the same morons who now demand a say in how AI is built and used. No, thanks. Government is not the solution. Government is the problem. The Republicans told us that, and they were right, just not in the way they meant.
      - cryo32 4mo ago
        They literally helped create the situation they are in. No sympathy!
        CamperBob2 4mo ago
        Anthropic, in particular, made a good-faith effort to meet the government halfway. You're seeing the (entirely predictable) result. Right now Sam Altman is sitting at Trump's literal right hand, while Amodei is exiled to the kids' table: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1u8gg19/anthropic_ceo_dario_joins_top_ai_ceos_meeting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1u8gg19/anthrop...
dwa3592 4mo ago
This number will go up in maybe ... 10 years?
- _pdp_ 4mo ago
  That's what I am thinking. Things are moving fast so from the inside the tech bubble it seems that everyone wants to use AI. That is not true for most people.
  - yoyohello13 4mo ago
    > Things are moving fast so from the inside the tech bubble it seems that everyone wants to use AI. Is it really 'want', or is it FOMO?
simonw 4mo ago
> Pew writes that 44 percent of U.S. adults now say they use OpenAI’s chatbot, a figure that’s more than doubled since 2023. > The next 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) lagging behind. Claude in 6th place, behind Gemini and Copilot and MetaAI and Grok? No wonder the general public still think AI is junk. Update: here's the underlying report: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an... The question there was "% of U.S. adults who say they ever use the following AI chatbots", so it's not a measure of overall usage, just exposure. Not surprising Gemini and Grok and MetaAI rank higher then.
- lunar_mycroft 4mo ago
  Is Claude really that much better than all the others for normal use?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Filligree 4mo ago
    Yes. There’s not really any doubt about it.
  - logicchains 4mo ago
    It's not that Claude is better, it's that Gemini and Copilot are so overwhelmingly bad.
    - simonw 4mo ago
      Especially the free tiers. Meta AI, too. Weaker models and less powerful harnesses give people a very sub-par experience compared to what you get if you pay for access to the better tools and models.
      - 4mo ago
jqpabc123 4mo ago
AI is capitalism gone wild. 50% of the S&P 500 valuation is now directly related to AI as are 40% of new layoffs. A quote often attributed to Stalin/Lenin/Marx is something like, "Capitalists will sell the rope to be used to hang them". AI is taking this even further. Corps are effectively borrowing tons of money in order to build the rope to hang the middle class --- to be followed by hanging themselves. The idea that you can lay off the middle class and business will continue as usual is a capitalistic fantasy. Without jobs, people can't afford to buy products built with AI.
- leecommamichael 4mo ago
  Citations, please
  - jqpabc123 4mo ago
    Just ask AI --- "What percentage of S&P 500 market cap is AI related?". AI wouldn't lie to you --- would it?
newtonianrules 4mo ago
Half of Americans voters elected Trump. Most people are idiots, I wouldn’t use that as a gauge yet.
- ARandomerDude 4mo ago
  This wildly assumes that "I voted for $candidate" means "I like $candidate." Every presidential election cycle we get served up two turds, one with a (D) and the other with an (R) by their name, and we have to pick which turd we'd like to ruin our country for us the least.
  - newtonianrules 4mo ago
    while I’d say that was true in most elections, this one the choices for the future couldn’t be more stark. The dude just had a UFC on the white house lawn, for instance, and fell into the Iran/Israel trap every previous president had avoided. But yeah, Kamala and Trump are the same level of turdness /s.
    - dogleash 4mo ago
      What do combat sports have to do with anything?
      - Zigurd 4mo ago
        Correctly punctuated it's "combat" "sports" being neither combat nor a sport.
      - freejazz 4mo ago
        A generous response
        deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
    - AngryData 4mo ago
Havoc 4mo ago
[dead]
khalic 4mo ago
People don’t even know what it is, they think it’s chat bots. Useless statistic. In the meantime, AI has given scientists 20 years of incredible tools, from which we now reap the fruits in our daily lives
- sheeshkebab 4mo ago
  it’s not been useful anywhere else - no self driving cars, no laundry helpers - just some idiotic animatronic carcasses that are barely able to walk around, and semi autonomous killer bots on ukraine frontlines.
  - esseph 4mo ago
    > and semi autonomous killer bots on ukraine frontlines. They did fully autonomous tests in 2022 through 2024. Something like everything in a 5km radius was dead. Various sources in mainstream media online about this now.
  - khalic 4mo ago
    No this is just the ones people understand. An AI that folds proteins for you is world altering, it’s just not as sexy as “killer drone”.
  - amalcon 4mo ago
    The most lucrative uses of deep neural networks today are ad targeting and recommendation algorithms. Those are other places.
    - khalic 4mo ago
      No this is, again, just the front facing uses that people fixate on. The most lucrative uses should be in fintec, just by the shear volumes of cash there
  - SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
    I saw over a dozen self driving cars on my way to work today. Weave Robotics launched a laundry helper months ago, although my sense is that "laundry folding" is a bit of a meme and people don't actually care very much about automating it.
silisili 4mo ago
Because the writing is on the wall already. Who hasn't been annoyed with "AI customer service", we already read about AI in the military, then you have the envisioned huge loss of jobs. People generally seem to like using it as a chatbot, or answer questions, on their own terms. But anywhere it's been forced against the user asking for it has been a disaster.
- Simulacra 4mo ago
  I hate the AI customer service, from drive thru to call center AI complete with fake background sounds, I hate it all. As a customer I find it insulting.
  - aix1 4mo ago
    Then why do you keep giving them your business? Have things gotten so bad where you live that there are no companies left who would treat you with respect?
    - blindhippo 4mo ago
      In many cases - yes, they have gotten that bad. It's pure fantasy that we live in a free market - there are a handful of companies that own nearly everything, there is very little customer choice or power to "speak with your money". I do agree though - if one doesn't like the way a company does business, do whatever you can to avoid giving them yours.
- dimgl 4mo ago
  It's not envisioned. There have been mass layoffs and a lot has been pinned on AI, even if it's true or not.
  - munk-a 4mo ago
    It's kind of hilarious, and a pretty obvious externality, most of these layoffs are clearly just restructuring that the companies want an excuse for but by labeling them as modernization and AI driven they've caused a major image problem for AI for the one thing it hasn't actually done much of (outside of really stupid companies - like the ones that fired their whole teams and moved their workforce to India as soon as they heard how cheap the labor was there).
K0nserv 4mo ago
I think views on AI are not really views on AI, they are views on capitalism. People don't feel optimistic that AI's impact will benefit ordinary people because, even if works out, the benefit will accrue only to capital owners. This view feels pretty understandable to me, but is ultimately orthogonal to whether AI is useful and effective for the kind of tasks we want to leverage it for.
- lorecore 4mo ago
  That's part of it, but views on AI are also views on art and authenticity. I'm a huge fan of AI for coding, research and writing for work. When I see AI generated images, music or anything else "creative" my reaction has grown to be pretty negative. It's all got NFT vibes aesthetically. I was absolutely blown away by Stable Diffusion and that AI could generate images, now I'm kind of disgusted with it. We've been flooded with low artistic value output and people are having a natural reaction to that.
  - K0nserv 4mo ago
    Agree. I actually think we'll see a resurgence in art and graphic design as a consequence. At least for now people can spot AI generated artifacts and many immediately have a negative reaction to it. I don't read blog posts that feature AI generated images, even though they are only slightly worse than stuff cribbed form Unsplash.
  - esikich 4mo ago
    The thing is the vast majority has never given a shit about authenticity though. All of the top pop stars are performing music made by committees and designed by marketing teams. Most music sold is and has been lowest common denominator trash since TV was invented. It's hilarious to see some Katy Perry fan frothing at the mouth about AI not being authentic art. As if they ever cared. Most mainstream entertainment is designed to placate and distract. And I'm not even saying mainstream is bad, there's nothing wrong with catchy. It's the crocodile tears over authenticity that bothers me.
    - 4mo ago
_the_inflator 4mo ago
I think that the smartphone is the single worst thing to happen, not so much AI. AI will hopefully help deal with reckless people typing in their smartphones while driving etc. Make no mistake: I am as much perpetrator as victim. While I am having even days off of my smartphone and never use it during driving, I am at least as much affected and addicted as most of us.
deleted 4mo ago
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jmyeet 4mo ago
The one and only product for AI is labor displacement and wage suppression. That's why companies love it. That's why people hate it. We don't live in a society where the benefits will be shared. We live in a society that would rather let people die in the streets than potentially hurt shareholder value. We are bouldering towards the total collapse of society. To me, it's like 10,000 people want to rule the post-apocalyptic world (Fallout style) where asking "maybe we shouldn't have the apocalypse?" is heresy.
- heathrow83829 4mo ago
  the AI bros would counterargue and say that with all the increased productivity, it will just open up more opportunities and thus more jobs. But, i don't think we're seeing that. Net jobs seems to be going down.
  - tennfown 4mo ago
    > Net jobs seems to be going down. The jobs that are created a just bullshit jobs. I took someone to the ER recently. It maybe took 5-6 people, mostly in poorly paid low level medical positions to take a couple images and maybe administer a shot. The kicker is the last guy was some remote worker in god knows where who’s sole job seems to be to appear in a screen to collect some small details from the patient and tell them how much the bill was. That’s it! Healthcare I believe is the single biggest industry as far as employment goes these days. It’s basically a jobs program.
gortok 4mo ago
When I use a computer to do work I want the computer to be right. I want to be able to trust the computer. With the inherit non-determinism and probabilistic nature of generative-AI, that fundamental reason why I engage a computer is lost. If the spreadsheet is wrong, it’s because the math is wrong, it’s because I made a mistake. It’s not because all of a sudden the computer decided the nature of algebra should be different than it is. Part of the reason why humans are rejecting AI is that we are putting it in places where it makes no sense, or places where humans prefer a human in the loop, there are plenty of places where machine learning algorithms make sense, but customer service is not one of them.
- jstummbillig 4mo ago
  Reality is non-deterministic (not actually, but in practice). We do strange things to balance this out all the time. Thinking that computer software must be exempt from that mess as a goal is just strange, and concerns itself too much with the ideal of a tool and not enough with the more important question: What if our lives get much, much better? Roughly everyone wants more out of life including the top one percent (and I don't mean the top 0.0001%, just your ordinary industrial nation doctors). How could we possibly morally justify denying everyone the best shot to get at least to that level, and I mean living people RIGHT NOW, ASAP not in a few hundred years? Who would be okay to say "yeah but you know, artists, copyright" and deny those who benefit most from this the opportunity? How could we not take this shot? I understand perfectly well that a lot of things will need reconfiguration and that it's going to be painful, but dear lord, let's focus on making it go well instead of ending it.
  - pesus 4mo ago
    > How could we possibly morally justify denying everyone the best shot to get at least to that level, and I mean living people RIGHT NOW, ASAP not in a few hundred years? How exactly do you think this is going to happen?
    - jstummbillig 4mo ago
      By trying! How else is it going to happen? Are we going to deny the immense potential? Nobody needs to draw up a specific plan for that to hold true, we are good at figuring shit out and using tools. I am not saying it's going to work but we are not getting much smarter right now, and we really need all the help we can get to accelerate more complicated stuff. And it is accelerating! Will it be as useful as I hope it will be? That is entirely beside the point. This post was not at all about me assigning any chance of the good outcome. Just that there is no other ethical option.
pesus 4mo ago
Does not at all surprise me that people don't think losing their livelihoods would have a positive impact. Maybe AI companies should stop bragging about trying to do that if they're concerned about people hating them.
everdrive 4mo ago
It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneliness epidemic, a constant drip-feed of outrage -- all so that people can make a small amount of money, distracted driving. Nearly every single service becoming worse over time, etc. Since then, the tech CEOs has been sidling up to the halls of power and effectively begging to help destroy privacy as thoroughly as possible. I certainly know that my life was transformed for the worse by social media. And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes. There is no successful social media company that actually cares about the negative impacts it has had on society. They speak about things such as "providing value" where value = time spent on the platform. They do not care if they ruin lives. So a few years ago, nearly everywhere you went people are talking about how thoroughly AI was going to transform society. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. Of course people are wary. Big tech has been a net negative in very loud, intrusive, and obvious ways in _most_ people's lives. And now they're saying they're going to radically reform society. The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. For sure, if they really how the power to radically change everything, they would change it for the worse and would never spend a moment worrying about the damage they had done.
- jms703 4mo ago
  > tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives This. Many of us are cogs in these machines doing the harm...to ourselves and others around us. The thing is, these companies can't exist without employees. But employees need the companies for money to pay the other companies.
  - sylos 4mo ago
    We are rapidly reaching a point where companies will exist without human employees, there'll just be the owners and an ai workforce.
thatmf 4mo ago
> Despite all of the skepticism, a whole lot of Americans also report using 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 are typically using the chatbots for research purposes or for work, Pew says. Yeah, we don't have a choice. These things were foisted upon us, and now we all just have to deal with it, so long as we want to keep being employed/employable.
- karakoram 4mo ago
  Exactly, there is no full opt-out in any product people use daily.
- ori_b 4mo ago
  Yes, "use this or be fired" tends to have an impact. A friend once made a analogy to opium: Sure, it's supposed to be addictive, but if you say no anyways, we're going to show up with gunboats.
- danny_codes 4mo ago
  Perhaps. America is not good at collective action. But maybe that will change as standard-of-living begins to collapse.
sph 4mo ago
They are all on this forum!
chopete3 4mo ago
AI is still a tool for complex tasks. Reaching impactful everyday use for regular users will take time. It is not clear who they interviewed for this study. It would be good to see how people in specific industries feel about AI.
jedsomers 4mo ago
imo the negative sentiment is less a practical response to AI specifically, and more an emotional response to digital technology in general. Eg: i think my kids will likely be more comfortable, have more convenience, than me — but i worry a lot they will be more anxious and lonely. I don’t personally believe this gets solved through regulation, religion, or self-discipline. imo we just need technology products that drastically reduce the cost of things that make us less anxious and lonely
- DesaiAshu 4mo ago
  Unless you’re in the top 5-10% of American society, it’s unclear that your kids will be more comfortable than you. Data here: https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-To-Be-Reformed/ https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-... At the core, this is what the pessimism is about. If AI replicates the advent of personal computers and the Internet, our society will look more like India where everyone has technology but only 5-10% of people live really well
softwaredoug 4mo ago
The promoters of AI themselves seem pretty convinced of the negative impact to society. It seems to even be part of the marketing. There’s very clearly a Substack of putting everyone out of work, reducing the power of labor, so a few can profit.
citrin_ru 4mo ago
Surprisingly high number given that people are being told by tech CEO that AI will replace all white collar jobs soon and a few years later AI guided robots will replace all blue collar jobs too.
nonethewiser 4mo ago
Will AI have a positive impact on society in China?
OptionOfT 4mo ago
Well, everywhere AI is being sold in a way to replace humans. Humans don't want to think about having to use a product at work that is genuinely aimed at actually replacing their job.
vanuatu 4mo ago
It's interesting that many developing and Asian countries have a more positive view of AI: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/people-around-the-world-see-a-winner-on-ai-and-its-not-the-us-00960930 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/people-around-the-w... How much of this is due to AI vs. the government and corporate structures in society? (Saw elsewhere that Chinese people were also much more optimistic)
- zuzululu 4mo ago
  probably because none of these polls can be trusted or accurate representation
  - vanuatu 4mo ago
    but we trust the stat that 16 pct of americans have a positive view?
    - zuzululu 4mo ago
      none includes the article in question. polls are often done in a way to prove their own biases if they were taken serious then what we are allowed to say or not would change drastically and political correctness would be laughed out of the room.
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  I guess I'd say the latter, although I think that fact does not quite have the valence that Western critics might assume. Vietnam, one of the most AI-positive countries in this poll, is explicitly planning (https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/communist-run-vietnam-eyes-influencers-ai-spruce-up-propaganda-documents-show-2026-05-08/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/commun...) to use AI to suppress dissent and achieve permanent authoritarian control of the Vietnamese information ecosystem. I think they might be right that it'll work!
- ori_b 4mo ago
  https://www.npr.org/2026/05/01/nx-s1-5807131/tech-worker-china-ai https://www.npr.org/2026/05/01/nx-s1-5807131/tech-worker-chi...
fennecbutt 4mo ago
Without corporations and trillionaires involved would they think differently perhaps? I don't think it's AI. I think it's the apathetic voterbase finally waking up to just how much tax dodging is going on.
chasil 4mo ago
I am mixed on the question. Claude has been quite helpful in reviewing my investments, and I have made a fair amount of money on his advice. His availability is unparalleled compared to any sort of financial planner. Professionally, I have run my programs and scripts through Copilot/OpenAI and sometimes received caustic and fiery criticism, but others praise with helpful suggestions. Oftentimes it does make fundamental mistakes. The threats of the end of the white collar class are not unduely worrying to me, as my retirement is close. Still, the whole of the culture is begin driven neurotic. My answers to this question are personal, and atypical. Perhaps there will be general good in this somewhere, though it may be hard to see.
- coffeecat 4mo ago
  > Claude has been quite helpful in reviewing my investments, and I have made a fair amount of money on his advice. His availability is unparalleled compared to any sort of financial planner. Just out of curiosity, what are some investment moves that you made as a result of Claude's advice? "In a bull market, everyone's a genius."
  - francisofascii 4mo ago
    This. The gains made by Claude stock picks should be compared a reasonable alternative investment strategy over the same timeframe.
  - chasil 4mo ago
    After hearing recently that oil is very likely going to $160 per barrel or more, I knew that I had to get out of the S&P500 in my 401k (FXAIX) and similar growth funds in my Roth. He really laid out the case for alternate funds in real estate and mortgage securities, with a bit more precious metals. I really didn't want to lose the gains I have made over the last year, and I think this will do it.
    - chasd00 4mo ago
      When oil hits even $145/bbl come back here and say “I told you so”. Until then I firmly believe oil will never get to anywhere close to $160/bbl.
BurningFrog 4mo ago
The public is always against new technology that makes jobs obsolete. This is awkward because the immense progress of the last 250 years has mostly come from such technology. Yet few people are aware of this. I hope we can continue to progress by eliminating jobs, but the current backlash is probably the biggest I've seen in my life.
- Jtarii 4mo ago
  >The public is always against new technology that makes jobs obsolete. What backlash was there to the computer?
  - olalonde 4mo ago
    A lot of boomers to this day have an intense phobia of computers. My grandpa retired early because he refused to learn how to use a computer.
deejaaymac 4mo ago
Replace 'AI' with any other technology. Imagine if only 16% of people thought that the invention of the wheel or soap would have a positive impact. The overall greater good of humanity matters more than anything else.
blobbers 4mo ago
Tech companies have basically just milked advertising dollars from trad media, and centralized malls into websites. Now we have dystopian warehouses and cars driving all over. We get more, but we do less. We interact with more of the world, but we interact with people less. It makes us unhappy.
ghosty141 4mo ago
It's weird. For me the problem stems from how society uses AI, not from AI itself. I personally had totally positive experiences in my job but seeing people using ChatGPT like some magic truth machien is scary.
apparent 4mo ago
It's hard to balance the downsides (devastating job losses that will affect certain fields) with the upsides (curing diseases, increasing efficiency in ways that will reduce costs of many goods). Is something a net benefit if everything is cheaper and cancer is cured, but you have no job?
- add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
  Is something a net benefit if the upsides are hypothetical and the downsides are extant?
  - apparent 4mo ago
    You think it's unclear as to whether AI will accelerate the rate at which diseases are cured? And if jobs are eliminated, that means costs will necessarily go down. I'm surprised how much people downvoted this comment. It acknowledges the upsides and downsides and doesn't say which is greater. It acknowledges that some people will have some very negative impacts. I guess if you think it's all good or all bad, then you would disagree with my open minded take...
FloatArtifact 4mo ago
The biggest threat isn't the bomb, bioweapon or AI supremacy. The true threat is AI's impact on human learning and development.
woah 4mo ago
This is less insightful than what people might want to read into it. The democratic party has adopted an anti-ai stance as a position in the partisan football game. NPR tote bag carriers read with great concern about AI's terrible water usage (in reality a tiny fraction of that used in things such as lawns), and about the fact that it can do a better job than amateur artists. On the other side, you don't see a similar upswell in support from the right. AI companies are from San Francisco, and their CEOs are weird, awkward, and probably gay abortion lovers.
- add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
  Sir, this is a Wendy's.
josefritzishere 4mo ago
Most of what AI is visibly used for is very unwelcome for American consumers: spam, propaganda, bad art, bad memes, marketing calls, bad phone support... Then the future promise is mass unemployment... of course Americans are negative on it. What is the upside for them?
shadowtree 4mo ago
It's a shame, as AI will improve healthcare on an unprecedented scale. I cannot get a specialist without referrals and endless appointments to spend more than 30min to discuss how to fix a serious issues. Claude? Hours and hours of back and forth. Public models now beat the specialized ones like OpenEvidence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04431-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04431-5 Diagnostics is getting blown apart by AI, the best cancer screening will be available in even remote corners of this world. We were constrained by the available brain mass of highly trained specialists - and this bottleneck is getting removed. Hard not to be optimistic on AI if you're in healthcare.
duncangh 4mo ago
An instantaneous measure of a sentiment undergoing an exponential decay I sense
throwaway613746 4mo ago
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freejazz 4mo ago
And a foolish 16 % at that
Brendinooo 4mo ago
My observation of society is that, by default, people tend to have a belief system of "most tech that existed before I was born was fine; any new tech is bad/unnecessary". So it doesn't surprise me that people are predisposed to not like this particular new tech.
- layer8 4mo ago
  AI seems to have a different impact here: https://fortune.com/2026/05/20/why-do-kids-hate-ai-gen-z-backlash/ https://fortune.com/2026/05/20/why-do-kids-hate-ai-gen-z-bac...
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
arjie 4mo ago
It is to America’s great fortune that her technological innovations are not passed by committee. In particular, polls always capture the status quo. Other things that were widely unpopular: interracial marriage, gay marriage. And especially for technology, public opinion led to the stalling of fission power in the US. So hurray for ignoring the majority of people. I’m glad people can offer other people services in a generally neutral way without needing to pass a committee.
- mlsu 4mo ago
  Stubbing my toe fucking sucks, but perhaps the fact that I think it sucks is actually evidence that it is secretly a good thing!
  - Der_Einzige 4mo ago
    This but unironically
- red_hare 4mo ago
  This is an insane take. Also wrong, gay marriage had 60% support before Obergefell v. Hodges.
- megaman821 4mo ago
  Polls like these always remimnd me that I need set up a investing strategy that does the opposite of public sentiment.
  - arjie 4mo ago
    Amusingly, I actually tried something like this using /r/wallstreetbets and there was no signal I could extract on a sufficiently small scale. Far dominated by Trump antics and rate actions. Perhaps others will have better luck.
- audran_marid 4mo ago
  Interracial and gay marriage were not "wildly unpopular" "technological innovations". What an extraordinary stretch to try to tie the in-fact deeply unpopular, job-destroying and wealth-concentrating AI boom to human--HUMAN--rights victories.
neilellis 4mo ago
Also relevant: Ten Percent Of U.S. High School Students Graduating Without Basic Object Permanence Skills - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ
renjimen 4mo ago
AI epitomises chasing a narrow definition of progress that benefits the few (increasing profits via automation) over a holistic definition of progress that benefits the many (reducing poverty, improving health, providing meaning). It's no wonder people hate it.
svara 4mo ago
I think one positive thing that might come of this is for AI to act as a sort of counterweight to the fragmentation of reality into different filter bubbles. It might be difficult to make models that have useful, high intelligence, but also are very biased. It could create a sort of grounding in logic and reality. Grok might actually be early evidence of this. Despite the bad press it gets, it's really not so bad. One can always hope ...
ori_b 4mo ago
Given the overall effects on society, AI use is a little like setting your neighbor's house on fire so that you can roast marshmallows. Marshmallows are pretty tasty, I guess.
Zigurd 4mo ago
It's the people not technology. Way back before AI was the hot issue, Eric Schmidt set a new bar for being tone deaf by going straight for saying privacy is dead get over it. Not "here are some tools to retain some privacy," not "here is some legislation to punish privacy violations," just get over it. It's gotten worse from there. The "dark enlightenment." Flirting with fascism. Creating the biggest meme stocks in history and promoting that as accomplishment. You're not fooling enough people. We might not be in your face about it, but we know you're not good people.
raincole 4mo ago
I believe the current pessimistic atmosphere has very little to do with AI. Sure, only 16% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact. But if you ask if they believe smart phone, social media, metaverse, crypto, etc will have a positive impact I highly doubt you'll get a much bigger number.
jurgenaut23 4mo ago
Not surprising and well deserved: our industry has done a remarkably poor job at balancing public and shareholder interests. Of course that isn’t the _only_ industry in this situation, but its deep intricacies into personal lives and psyches has made it particularly bad. The boss of the main private TV channel in France famously said in 90s that his job consisted in “selling brain time to advertisers”. What was handicraft has been turned into a mass extraction business by the Google and Facebook of our world. AI is the cherry on the cake, really.
lithboy 4mo ago
Just a reminder that the baddie isn't technology, but capitalism.
- freejazz 4mo ago
  It's the medium, not the message.
ElijahLynn 4mo ago
It'd be interesting to see how many people thought cars would have a positive impact on society back in the day.
- hk__2 4mo ago
  Cars are not something that didn’t exist and then was suddendly invented; it has slowly evolved over centuries.
armchairhacker 4mo ago
Please link to the actual survey instead of this commission outlet, which didn't even link it themselves: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an... In the survey, 31% Americans believe AI will have an "equally positive and negative impact", and 13% are "not sure"; it's 16% pro 44% N/A 40% anti. I wish the survey also included non-Americans, because from a 2025 survey (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-around-the-world-view-ai/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...) people from other countries were less concerned; those from Israel and South Korea were more optimistic than pessimistic. Notably, Pew did this survey 14 months ago and the results were better, but not by much: 17% pro 49% N/A 35% anti. They also did a survey in 2023, and already 50% of US respondents were "more concerned than excited" about AI, while only 10% were "more excited than concerned".
- qwertygnu 4mo ago
  > % of U.S. adults who say they think the impact of AI on __ over the next 20 years will be positive or negative Blank | Negative | Positive | Equal | Not sure Society | 40 | 16 | 31 | 13 Them, personally | 31 | 23 | 27 | 19 --- Probably as much a commentary on the fallacy that bad things won't happen to us, personally, as much as a commentary on AI. But I found the difference interesting.
- holistio 4mo ago
  > the results were better They were worse.
ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an...
a13o 4mo ago
[dead]
johnbatch 4mo ago
Source Link - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an... is a better link.
mock-possum 4mo ago
Like any positive at all, or a net positive?
rose-knuckle17 4mo ago
- polls can manipulate people to give the answer a pollster wants. - half of everyone is below average. - americans, unbelievably, voted to re-elect Trump. The fact that 16 percent of americans are short-sited, ignorant and speak in contradiction to their best interests should surprise no one.
analog8374 4mo ago
Do you think we came to this opinion via an understanding of AI? I don't.
sudhirjangir 4mo ago
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analog8374 4mo ago
I think that AI would make a good replacement for the government. Or at least the executive branch. I think that AI is a great way to sum our collective will. Better than representation by ambitious businessmen.
transitKnox 4mo ago
This isn't terribly surprising. Americans either think AI is so good that it will replace their jobs, or AI is so bad that it will cause too many mistakes. Their beliefs aren't unfounded, but it gets more accurate by the quarter. I personally think it all just shifts - AI becomes much more reliable and accurate over time, and as such, we all use it to be 30-100% more effective at our work.
carodgers 4mo ago
It behooves every company working on some form of actual AI to immediately switch branding to distance themselves from the slop bots. Call it image recognition, automated translate, inventory automation, what have you. I tried to use claude for a completely menial task yesterday, adding some resistant-starch foods to my diet, and it was worse than useless. Actively wasting my time with claims that buckled as soon as I questioned them and completely falsified citations from product pages that it recommended. If you are branding your product as "AI" when these word salad spitters are still dominating headlines, you deserve all the headwinds coming to you.
jstummbillig 4mo ago
Now I wonder what they think will have a positive impact on society.
olalonde 4mo ago
Stated preferences vs revealed preferences. People say they don't like it but they still use it.
- Silamoth 4mo ago
  Do they? And if so, by choice? I don’t like “AI”, and I don’t use it. I read lots of stories where people are forced to use it at work but don’t use it otherwise. Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it?
  - shric 4mo ago
    > Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it? Yes. Per your previous statement, those people who are “forced” to use it at work. While it might be a requirement of their job, what job they do is usually a choice.
- ceejayoz 4mo ago
  That's a false dichotomy; I prefer kayaking over work, but I still have to work. We've all seen stories about performance evaluations that include "how much AI are you using?" We've all seen Microsoft shove it into the OS and even the physical keyboard. We've all had the little suggestions pop up in Gmail.
  - satvikpendem 4mo ago
    ChatGPT has a billion users and it's estimated most are consumers not enterprise users. It's about 40 million paid consumer vs 9 million enterprise users. Once they file their S-1 we'll see exact figures.
    - simsla 4mo ago
      How does a billion break down into 49 million? I'm assuming you mean 400 and 90 million?
Shitty-kitty 4mo ago
The industrial revolution is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements in human history. What everyone glosses over is that it really sucked for the workers that lived thru it. Highly skilled jobs like weaving became obsolete and the low-skill factory work that replaced it, paid little more than a starvation wage.
nullorempty 4mo ago
Most of the west is going to be fucked. We, in the west, are optimizing towards more profit. Poor get poorer every year and rich get richer. We lead multiple wars which we finance with public money. The profits go to the rich again. China is confucian, and, unlike the west, they value a different thing. The rich seem to forget that one can not take the riches to the grave. All the great art that explains it is forgotten and never looked at. If in the past the rich subsidized building churches and schools and housing for the poor, nowadays rich just rake more money. They never have enough. The outlook is bleak.
hintymad 4mo ago
This is not surprising. The AI folks, especially people like Dario, kept screaming from the bottom of their lungs that AI is bad, AI is dangerous, AI is going to grab X% of the jobs, wealth is going to concentrate to about 10M people, and etc. Why would average Americans think positively of AI at all? It looks those guys are acting on asymmetrical risks: if they speak optimistically about AI yet they are wrong down the road, they may get angry mobs. If they speak pessimistically about AI and they are wrong, the worst is that they get mocked.
rdsubhas 4mo ago
I love AI and use it every day. But comparing it to PC/internet/manufacturing/etc is IMHO not the right comparison. Technology revolutions like PC, internet, smartphones, communication, etc – unfolded in this way: They create more jobs NOW in the hope of automating and reducing jobs in FUTURE. AI is more comparable to outsourcing. It works in reverse: It reduces jobs NOW (which is happening right now) in the hope of creating more jobs in FUTURE (which is known not to happen).

399 points by karakoram 4mo ago

Must be missing some zeroes. There's no way that AI techbros and major shareholders are 16% of the US. Must be more like .0016%.

danielbln 4mo ago
Not everyone who likes something that you don't like is an X-bro, so maybe that clears things up.

cryo32 4mo ago

The pushback I see everywhere outside of tech suggests the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet as much as it likes to think it does.

operatingthetan 4mo ago
It's to the point where if you drop an AI meme or screenshot of text in chat people will mock you. I don't see that getting better?
- aspenmartin 4mo ago
  Does it need to?
  - pesus 4mo ago
    If anything, it should continue and apply to anyone using AI.
  - operatingthetan 4mo ago
    nope!
- munk-a 4mo ago
  Memes have associations, connotations, subtleties in how they're used in different contexts - they're a communication medium. A well applied meme is like (it isn't - but it can be viewed similarly to) poetry where you've matched your idea with an evocative statement to a perfect degree and the subtleties and implications in your head are well and fully transferred to the reader. An AI meme is like a dry technical paper that lays out all of the information in a kludgy unimaginative manner. Good meme based communication relies on a lot of audience understanding and can draw people together as a demonstration of kinship.
  - operatingthetan 4mo ago
    I mean I can make a good meme with AI but it requires effort to ensure it is indistinguishable from a homegrown meme.
baron816 4mo ago
I really think there’s a concerted effort by the media to demonize AI though. Every third story I see on my news feeds is some sensationalist story about how AI/data centers are bad. The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block.
- willis936 4mo ago
  The media are followers here, not leaders. 84% of people can't agree on the color blue[0]. Don't try to make excuses for a few billionaires finding the limit of their reality distortion field. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4921196/#:~:text=A%20color%20percept,bias%20for%20colors https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4921196/#:~:text=A%...
- esseph 4mo ago
  > I really think there’s a concerted effort by the media to demonize AI though That sounds literally insane to me. This is not coming from the media, many of the same people that own the media have a vested interest in this particular US political administration... which is also basically all of big tech.
- alpha_squared 4mo ago
  > The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block. Maybe, but it's also pretty clear that the entire purpose and intent of delivering "AI" to the economy is to wholly wipe out labor. Do I think that's realistic? No. SpaceX's total addressable market (TAM) in their S-1 filing to go public stated as much. Their TAM is $28.5T(!) with $26.5T of it being AI. That's larger than the US GDP (~$24T). You can only throw numbers like that around if you're explicitly aiming to replace labor, no matter how realistic it is. Personally, I'm tired of mediocre people who've attained some amount of business success turning around and trying to dismantle democratic systems because it's incompatible with their world view. It's more than reasonable to complain about these things night and day. The alternative to vocal complaints won't be pretty.
  - baron816 4mo ago
aspenmartin 4mo ago
Frontier model companies aren’t banking on the general public “wanting” AI. They are on a path to a product that won’t need to be wanted because the entire economy will need it.
- nozzlegear 4mo ago
  Well, they hope they are on such a path.
  - aspenmartin 4mo ago
    Yes but what evidence is there that they aren’t? To me, scaling laws and empirical benchmark trends along with high adoption (all of this together, not individually) strongly support this, and also coding agents have become load bearing so it’s sort of already happening I would say.
    - geerlingguy 4mo ago
      I think that's an optimistic take; the load bearing portion hasn't permeated traditional development. Like so many things popular on HN, the tools that are here are great aids for good development processes and practitioners... but they are not actually replacing them in applications that will exist after the AI bubble deflates.
    - nozzlegear 4mo ago
      I don't disagree that coding agents have high adoption when it comes to software, but I do disagree that there's high adoption outside of this industry. There's no breakthrough "Claude Code but for non-tech industries" product out there that people are picking up in droves. My brother-in-law isn't using AI to manage his construction business, for example, and my sister isn't using it to run her non-profit daycare. The most AI usage I've seen from my wife and family is when they take pictures of our/their lawns and houses, then use ChatGPT to reimagine them with different landscaping ideas or paint trims.
- ForHackernews 4mo ago
AngryData 4mo ago
I think the tech industry is overestimating its value. Because it can code they think it can do anything else, but unlike code a lot of other work can't have a bunch of little bugs and mistakes because you can't open up real life and edit it after the fact. Plus it lacks actual reasoning to solve novel problems. Hiring an engineer to finetooth comb blueprints for mistakes before construction will take nearly as much time as having an engineer draft them themselves. And they will be smart enough to not do something silly like putting the electrical panel on the back of the shower wall. If you just vibecode some blueprints and start construction without the comb you could lose way more than you saved with something as simple as pouring a support pillar or building a wall 2 inches off and having to tear it out later and rebuild.
- manoDev 4mo ago
  Definitely. The secret will be identifying use cases where AI usage is a potential upside with limited downside, not the current blanket statements about replacing all jobs without considering lifetime ROI. There’s a lot of boring work AI can automate with minimal risk. There’s also the potential to decrease risk with AI too, including ensembles of different AIs modals and AI + human.
  - munk-a 4mo ago
    A human that hand-compiles 10,000 lines of C code is a very silly person. A human that works on device drivers and drops into assembly code for a dozen highly critical lines to enable real time communication can be irreplaceable. AI is a tool that can be highly useful and it's a tool with a number of large flaws that you need to acknowledge and account for. Knowing when it's worth using is a vital skill.
  - bwestergard 4mo ago
    "There’s a lot of boring work AI can automate with minimal risk. There’s also the potential to decrease risk with AI too, including ensembles of different AIs modals and AI + human." I think the trouble, economically speaking, is that while it will be possible from a purely technical standpoint to unbundle a job performed by a human into separate tasks, many of which can be "done" by agents, the new process will not present a cost savings overall once the entire lifecycle of the task is taken into account. The economist David Autor has written about these challenges extensively, and his theory accords with my experiences.
tennfown 4mo ago
There needs to be a brutal humbling
- cryo32 4mo ago
  Definitely. That'll have to come through economic instruments though rather than failure.
spprashant 4mo ago
Not ever profession has an insatiable desire to automate away their own jobs.
karakoram 4mo ago
I have said this before, I just can NOT understand how you can measure adoption of a technology or product without giving people a full opt-out. This is very basic in technology products. It is very easy to say that Gmail AI product has 1.8 Billion users because there are about 1.8 Billion Gmail accounts/users and they have absolutely no way of completely opting out. (opting out without the company punishing users by taking away important features) A simple A/B Test with just 50,000 or 100,000 users depending on the product will give everyone the REAL picture of where users stand.
zombot 4mo ago
> the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. You should consider that the industry is just lying to make everyone believe that everyone else is interested. Creating a sense of inevitability. It's the same trick that every ad out there uses, selling you a profitable fantasy as reality.
atleastoptimal 4mo ago
They didn't overestimate the interest. ChatGPT is extremely popular and notable. >The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet Of course they don't, but they are still allowed to make a product, and pivot if there's no consumer demand. However there is huge consumer and business demand for AI so they are justified in making the investments they are.
- cryo32 4mo ago
  Not quite. They don't operate like that. It is not ok to lobby and manipulate governments for fiscal policy changes to write off the costs and risks on the general public. We MUST be entirely insulated from their failure as society. If they can't raise the capital for the product then they should fail quietly and insignificantly which is not what is going to happen at the moment.
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    It is not ok to lobby and manipulate governments for fiscal policy changes to write off the costs and risks on the general public. Right now they have to lobby and manipulate the government just to keep from being shut down on a mad king's whim. A mad king elected and re-elected by the same morons who now demand a say in how AI is built and used. No, thanks. Government is not the solution. Government is the problem. The Republicans told us that, and they were right, just not in the way they meant.
    - cryo32 4mo ago
      They literally helped create the situation they are in. No sympathy!
      - CamperBob2 4mo ago
        Anthropic, in particular, made a good-faith effort to meet the government halfway. You're seeing the (entirely predictable) result. Right now Sam Altman is sitting at Trump's literal right hand, while Amodei is exiled to the kids' table: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1u8gg19/anthropic_ceo_dario_joins_top_ai_ceos_meeting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1u8gg19/anthrop...

dwa3592 4mo ago

This number will go up in maybe ... 10 years?

_pdp_ 4mo ago
That's what I am thinking. Things are moving fast so from the inside the tech bubble it seems that everyone wants to use AI. That is not true for most people.
- yoyohello13 4mo ago
  > Things are moving fast so from the inside the tech bubble it seems that everyone wants to use AI. Is it really 'want', or is it FOMO?

simonw 4mo ago

> Pew writes that 44 percent of U.S. adults now say they use OpenAI’s chatbot, a figure that’s more than doubled since 2023. > The next 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) lagging behind. Claude in 6th place, behind Gemini and Copilot and MetaAI and Grok? No wonder the general public still think AI is junk. Update: here's the underlying report: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an... The question there was "% of U.S. adults who say they ever use the following AI chatbots", so it's not a measure of overall usage, just exposure. Not surprising Gemini and Grok and MetaAI rank higher then.

lunar_mycroft 4mo ago
Is Claude really that much better than all the others for normal use?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- Filligree 4mo ago
  Yes. There’s not really any doubt about it.
- logicchains 4mo ago
  It's not that Claude is better, it's that Gemini and Copilot are so overwhelmingly bad.
  - simonw 4mo ago
    Especially the free tiers. Meta AI, too. Weaker models and less powerful harnesses give people a very sub-par experience compared to what you get if you pay for access to the better tools and models.
    - 4mo ago

jqpabc123 4mo ago

AI is capitalism gone wild. 50% of the S&P 500 valuation is now directly related to AI as are 40% of new layoffs. A quote often attributed to Stalin/Lenin/Marx is something like, "Capitalists will sell the rope to be used to hang them". AI is taking this even further. Corps are effectively borrowing tons of money in order to build the rope to hang the middle class --- to be followed by hanging themselves. The idea that you can lay off the middle class and business will continue as usual is a capitalistic fantasy. Without jobs, people can't afford to buy products built with AI.

leecommamichael 4mo ago
Citations, please
- jqpabc123 4mo ago
  Just ask AI --- "What percentage of S&P 500 market cap is AI related?". AI wouldn't lie to you --- would it?

newtonianrules 4mo ago

Half of Americans voters elected Trump. Most people are idiots, I wouldn’t use that as a gauge yet.

ARandomerDude 4mo ago
This wildly assumes that "I voted for $candidate" means "I like $candidate." Every presidential election cycle we get served up two turds, one with a (D) and the other with an (R) by their name, and we have to pick which turd we'd like to ruin our country for us the least.
- newtonianrules 4mo ago
  while I’d say that was true in most elections, this one the choices for the future couldn’t be more stark. The dude just had a UFC on the white house lawn, for instance, and fell into the Iran/Israel trap every previous president had avoided. But yeah, Kamala and Trump are the same level of turdness /s.
  - dogleash 4mo ago
    What do combat sports have to do with anything?
    - Zigurd 4mo ago
      Correctly punctuated it's "combat" "sports" being neither combat nor a sport.
    - freejazz 4mo ago
      A generous response
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
  - AngryData 4mo ago

Havoc 4mo ago

[dead]

khalic 4mo ago

People don’t even know what it is, they think it’s chat bots. Useless statistic. In the meantime, AI has given scientists 20 years of incredible tools, from which we now reap the fruits in our daily lives

sheeshkebab 4mo ago
it’s not been useful anywhere else - no self driving cars, no laundry helpers - just some idiotic animatronic carcasses that are barely able to walk around, and semi autonomous killer bots on ukraine frontlines.
- esseph 4mo ago
  > and semi autonomous killer bots on ukraine frontlines. They did fully autonomous tests in 2022 through 2024. Something like everything in a 5km radius was dead. Various sources in mainstream media online about this now.
- khalic 4mo ago
  No this is just the ones people understand. An AI that folds proteins for you is world altering, it’s just not as sexy as “killer drone”.
- amalcon 4mo ago
  The most lucrative uses of deep neural networks today are ad targeting and recommendation algorithms. Those are other places.
  - khalic 4mo ago
    No this is, again, just the front facing uses that people fixate on. The most lucrative uses should be in fintec, just by the shear volumes of cash there
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  I saw over a dozen self driving cars on my way to work today. Weave Robotics launched a laundry helper months ago, although my sense is that "laundry folding" is a bit of a meme and people don't actually care very much about automating it.

silisili 4mo ago

Because the writing is on the wall already. Who hasn't been annoyed with "AI customer service", we already read about AI in the military, then you have the envisioned huge loss of jobs. People generally seem to like using it as a chatbot, or answer questions, on their own terms. But anywhere it's been forced against the user asking for it has been a disaster.

Simulacra 4mo ago
I hate the AI customer service, from drive thru to call center AI complete with fake background sounds, I hate it all. As a customer I find it insulting.
- aix1 4mo ago
  Then why do you keep giving them your business? Have things gotten so bad where you live that there are no companies left who would treat you with respect?
  - blindhippo 4mo ago
    In many cases - yes, they have gotten that bad. It's pure fantasy that we live in a free market - there are a handful of companies that own nearly everything, there is very little customer choice or power to "speak with your money". I do agree though - if one doesn't like the way a company does business, do whatever you can to avoid giving them yours.
dimgl 4mo ago
It's not envisioned. There have been mass layoffs and a lot has been pinned on AI, even if it's true or not.
- munk-a 4mo ago
  It's kind of hilarious, and a pretty obvious externality, most of these layoffs are clearly just restructuring that the companies want an excuse for but by labeling them as modernization and AI driven they've caused a major image problem for AI for the one thing it hasn't actually done much of (outside of really stupid companies - like the ones that fired their whole teams and moved their workforce to India as soon as they heard how cheap the labor was there).

K0nserv 4mo ago

I think views on AI are not really views on AI, they are views on capitalism. People don't feel optimistic that AI's impact will benefit ordinary people because, even if works out, the benefit will accrue only to capital owners. This view feels pretty understandable to me, but is ultimately orthogonal to whether AI is useful and effective for the kind of tasks we want to leverage it for.

lorecore 4mo ago
That's part of it, but views on AI are also views on art and authenticity. I'm a huge fan of AI for coding, research and writing for work. When I see AI generated images, music or anything else "creative" my reaction has grown to be pretty negative. It's all got NFT vibes aesthetically. I was absolutely blown away by Stable Diffusion and that AI could generate images, now I'm kind of disgusted with it. We've been flooded with low artistic value output and people are having a natural reaction to that.
- K0nserv 4mo ago
  Agree. I actually think we'll see a resurgence in art and graphic design as a consequence. At least for now people can spot AI generated artifacts and many immediately have a negative reaction to it. I don't read blog posts that feature AI generated images, even though they are only slightly worse than stuff cribbed form Unsplash.
- esikich 4mo ago
  The thing is the vast majority has never given a shit about authenticity though. All of the top pop stars are performing music made by committees and designed by marketing teams. Most music sold is and has been lowest common denominator trash since TV was invented. It's hilarious to see some Katy Perry fan frothing at the mouth about AI not being authentic art. As if they ever cared. Most mainstream entertainment is designed to placate and distract. And I'm not even saying mainstream is bad, there's nothing wrong with catchy. It's the crocodile tears over authenticity that bothers me.
  - 4mo ago

_the_inflator 4mo ago

I think that the smartphone is the single worst thing to happen, not so much AI. AI will hopefully help deal with reckless people typing in their smartphones while driving etc. Make no mistake: I am as much perpetrator as victim. While I am having even days off of my smartphone and never use it during driving, I am at least as much affected and addicted as most of us.

deleted 4mo ago

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jmyeet 4mo ago

The one and only product for AI is labor displacement and wage suppression. That's why companies love it. That's why people hate it. We don't live in a society where the benefits will be shared. We live in a society that would rather let people die in the streets than potentially hurt shareholder value. We are bouldering towards the total collapse of society. To me, it's like 10,000 people want to rule the post-apocalyptic world (Fallout style) where asking "maybe we shouldn't have the apocalypse?" is heresy.

heathrow83829 4mo ago
the AI bros would counterargue and say that with all the increased productivity, it will just open up more opportunities and thus more jobs. But, i don't think we're seeing that. Net jobs seems to be going down.
- tennfown 4mo ago
  > Net jobs seems to be going down. The jobs that are created a just bullshit jobs. I took someone to the ER recently. It maybe took 5-6 people, mostly in poorly paid low level medical positions to take a couple images and maybe administer a shot. The kicker is the last guy was some remote worker in god knows where who’s sole job seems to be to appear in a screen to collect some small details from the patient and tell them how much the bill was. That’s it! Healthcare I believe is the single biggest industry as far as employment goes these days. It’s basically a jobs program.

gortok 4mo ago

When I use a computer to do work I want the computer to be right. I want to be able to trust the computer. With the inherit non-determinism and probabilistic nature of generative-AI, that fundamental reason why I engage a computer is lost. If the spreadsheet is wrong, it’s because the math is wrong, it’s because I made a mistake. It’s not because all of a sudden the computer decided the nature of algebra should be different than it is. Part of the reason why humans are rejecting AI is that we are putting it in places where it makes no sense, or places where humans prefer a human in the loop, there are plenty of places where machine learning algorithms make sense, but customer service is not one of them.

jstummbillig 4mo ago
Reality is non-deterministic (not actually, but in practice). We do strange things to balance this out all the time. Thinking that computer software must be exempt from that mess as a goal is just strange, and concerns itself too much with the ideal of a tool and not enough with the more important question: What if our lives get much, much better? Roughly everyone wants more out of life including the top one percent (and I don't mean the top 0.0001%, just your ordinary industrial nation doctors). How could we possibly morally justify denying everyone the best shot to get at least to that level, and I mean living people RIGHT NOW, ASAP not in a few hundred years? Who would be okay to say "yeah but you know, artists, copyright" and deny those who benefit most from this the opportunity? How could we not take this shot? I understand perfectly well that a lot of things will need reconfiguration and that it's going to be painful, but dear lord, let's focus on making it go well instead of ending it.
- pesus 4mo ago
  > How could we possibly morally justify denying everyone the best shot to get at least to that level, and I mean living people RIGHT NOW, ASAP not in a few hundred years? How exactly do you think this is going to happen?
  - jstummbillig 4mo ago
    By trying! How else is it going to happen? Are we going to deny the immense potential? Nobody needs to draw up a specific plan for that to hold true, we are good at figuring shit out and using tools. I am not saying it's going to work but we are not getting much smarter right now, and we really need all the help we can get to accelerate more complicated stuff. And it is accelerating! Will it be as useful as I hope it will be? That is entirely beside the point. This post was not at all about me assigning any chance of the good outcome. Just that there is no other ethical option.

pesus 4mo ago

Does not at all surprise me that people don't think losing their livelihoods would have a positive impact. Maybe AI companies should stop bragging about trying to do that if they're concerned about people hating them.

everdrive 4mo ago

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneliness epidemic, a constant drip-feed of outrage -- all so that people can make a small amount of money, distracted driving. Nearly every single service becoming worse over time, etc. Since then, the tech CEOs has been sidling up to the halls of power and effectively begging to help destroy privacy as thoroughly as possible. I certainly know that my life was transformed for the worse by social media. And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes. There is no successful social media company that actually cares about the negative impacts it has had on society. They speak about things such as "providing value" where value = time spent on the platform. They do not care if they ruin lives. So a few years ago, nearly everywhere you went people are talking about how thoroughly AI was going to transform society. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. Of course people are wary. Big tech has been a net negative in very loud, intrusive, and obvious ways in _most_ people's lives. And now they're saying they're going to radically reform society. The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. For sure, if they really how the power to radically change everything, they would change it for the worse and would never spend a moment worrying about the damage they had done.

jms703 4mo ago
> tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives This. Many of us are cogs in these machines doing the harm...to ourselves and others around us. The thing is, these companies can't exist without employees. But employees need the companies for money to pay the other companies.
- sylos 4mo ago
  We are rapidly reaching a point where companies will exist without human employees, there'll just be the owners and an ai workforce.

thatmf 4mo ago

> Despite all of the skepticism, a whole lot of Americans also report using 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 are typically using the chatbots for research purposes or for work, Pew says. Yeah, we don't have a choice. These things were foisted upon us, and now we all just have to deal with it, so long as we want to keep being employed/employable.

karakoram 4mo ago
Exactly, there is no full opt-out in any product people use daily.
ori_b 4mo ago
Yes, "use this or be fired" tends to have an impact. A friend once made a analogy to opium: Sure, it's supposed to be addictive, but if you say no anyways, we're going to show up with gunboats.
danny_codes 4mo ago
Perhaps. America is not good at collective action. But maybe that will change as standard-of-living begins to collapse.

sph 4mo ago

They are all on this forum!

chopete3 4mo ago

AI is still a tool for complex tasks. Reaching impactful everyday use for regular users will take time. It is not clear who they interviewed for this study. It would be good to see how people in specific industries feel about AI.

jedsomers 4mo ago

imo the negative sentiment is less a practical response to AI specifically, and more an emotional response to digital technology in general. Eg: i think my kids will likely be more comfortable, have more convenience, than me — but i worry a lot they will be more anxious and lonely. I don’t personally believe this gets solved through regulation, religion, or self-discipline. imo we just need technology products that drastically reduce the cost of things that make us less anxious and lonely

DesaiAshu 4mo ago
Unless you’re in the top 5-10% of American society, it’s unclear that your kids will be more comfortable than you. Data here: https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-To-Be-Reformed/ https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-... At the core, this is what the pessimism is about. If AI replicates the advent of personal computers and the Internet, our society will look more like India where everyone has technology but only 5-10% of people live really well

softwaredoug 4mo ago

The promoters of AI themselves seem pretty convinced of the negative impact to society. It seems to even be part of the marketing. There’s very clearly a Substack of putting everyone out of work, reducing the power of labor, so a few can profit.

citrin_ru 4mo ago

Surprisingly high number given that people are being told by tech CEO that AI will replace all white collar jobs soon and a few years later AI guided robots will replace all blue collar jobs too.

nonethewiser 4mo ago

Will AI have a positive impact on society in China?

OptionOfT 4mo ago

Well, everywhere AI is being sold in a way to replace humans. Humans don't want to think about having to use a product at work that is genuinely aimed at actually replacing their job.

vanuatu 4mo ago

It's interesting that many developing and Asian countries have a more positive view of AI: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/people-around-the-world-see-a-winner-on-ai-and-its-not-the-us-00960930 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/people-around-the-w... How much of this is due to AI vs. the government and corporate structures in society? (Saw elsewhere that Chinese people were also much more optimistic)

zuzululu 4mo ago
probably because none of these polls can be trusted or accurate representation
- vanuatu 4mo ago
  but we trust the stat that 16 pct of americans have a positive view?
  - zuzululu 4mo ago
    none includes the article in question. polls are often done in a way to prove their own biases if they were taken serious then what we are allowed to say or not would change drastically and political correctness would be laughed out of the room.
SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
I guess I'd say the latter, although I think that fact does not quite have the valence that Western critics might assume. Vietnam, one of the most AI-positive countries in this poll, is explicitly planning (https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/communist-run-vietnam-eyes-influencers-ai-spruce-up-propaganda-documents-show-2026-05-08/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/commun...) to use AI to suppress dissent and achieve permanent authoritarian control of the Vietnamese information ecosystem. I think they might be right that it'll work!
ori_b 4mo ago
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/01/nx-s1-5807131/tech-worker-china-ai https://www.npr.org/2026/05/01/nx-s1-5807131/tech-worker-chi...

fennecbutt 4mo ago

Without corporations and trillionaires involved would they think differently perhaps? I don't think it's AI. I think it's the apathetic voterbase finally waking up to just how much tax dodging is going on.

chasil 4mo ago

I am mixed on the question. Claude has been quite helpful in reviewing my investments, and I have made a fair amount of money on his advice. His availability is unparalleled compared to any sort of financial planner. Professionally, I have run my programs and scripts through Copilot/OpenAI and sometimes received caustic and fiery criticism, but others praise with helpful suggestions. Oftentimes it does make fundamental mistakes. The threats of the end of the white collar class are not unduely worrying to me, as my retirement is close. Still, the whole of the culture is begin driven neurotic. My answers to this question are personal, and atypical. Perhaps there will be general good in this somewhere, though it may be hard to see.

coffeecat 4mo ago
> Claude has been quite helpful in reviewing my investments, and I have made a fair amount of money on his advice. His availability is unparalleled compared to any sort of financial planner. Just out of curiosity, what are some investment moves that you made as a result of Claude's advice? "In a bull market, everyone's a genius."
- francisofascii 4mo ago
  This. The gains made by Claude stock picks should be compared a reasonable alternative investment strategy over the same timeframe.
- chasil 4mo ago
  After hearing recently that oil is very likely going to $160 per barrel or more, I knew that I had to get out of the S&P500 in my 401k (FXAIX) and similar growth funds in my Roth. He really laid out the case for alternate funds in real estate and mortgage securities, with a bit more precious metals. I really didn't want to lose the gains I have made over the last year, and I think this will do it.
  - chasd00 4mo ago
    When oil hits even $145/bbl come back here and say “I told you so”. Until then I firmly believe oil will never get to anywhere close to $160/bbl.

BurningFrog 4mo ago

The public is always against new technology that makes jobs obsolete. This is awkward because the immense progress of the last 250 years has mostly come from such technology. Yet few people are aware of this. I hope we can continue to progress by eliminating jobs, but the current backlash is probably the biggest I've seen in my life.

Jtarii 4mo ago
>The public is always against new technology that makes jobs obsolete. What backlash was there to the computer?
- olalonde 4mo ago
  A lot of boomers to this day have an intense phobia of computers. My grandpa retired early because he refused to learn how to use a computer.

deejaaymac 4mo ago

Replace 'AI' with any other technology. Imagine if only 16% of people thought that the invention of the wheel or soap would have a positive impact. The overall greater good of humanity matters more than anything else.

blobbers 4mo ago

Tech companies have basically just milked advertising dollars from trad media, and centralized malls into websites. Now we have dystopian warehouses and cars driving all over. We get more, but we do less. We interact with more of the world, but we interact with people less. It makes us unhappy.

ghosty141 4mo ago

It's weird. For me the problem stems from how society uses AI, not from AI itself. I personally had totally positive experiences in my job but seeing people using ChatGPT like some magic truth machien is scary.

apparent 4mo ago

It's hard to balance the downsides (devastating job losses that will affect certain fields) with the upsides (curing diseases, increasing efficiency in ways that will reduce costs of many goods). Is something a net benefit if everything is cheaper and cancer is cured, but you have no job?

add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
Is something a net benefit if the upsides are hypothetical and the downsides are extant?
- apparent 4mo ago
  You think it's unclear as to whether AI will accelerate the rate at which diseases are cured? And if jobs are eliminated, that means costs will necessarily go down. I'm surprised how much people downvoted this comment. It acknowledges the upsides and downsides and doesn't say which is greater. It acknowledges that some people will have some very negative impacts. I guess if you think it's all good or all bad, then you would disagree with my open minded take...

FloatArtifact 4mo ago

The biggest threat isn't the bomb, bioweapon or AI supremacy. The true threat is AI's impact on human learning and development.

woah 4mo ago

This is less insightful than what people might want to read into it. The democratic party has adopted an anti-ai stance as a position in the partisan football game. NPR tote bag carriers read with great concern about AI's terrible water usage (in reality a tiny fraction of that used in things such as lawns), and about the fact that it can do a better job than amateur artists. On the other side, you don't see a similar upswell in support from the right. AI companies are from San Francisco, and their CEOs are weird, awkward, and probably gay abortion lovers.

add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
Sir, this is a Wendy's.

josefritzishere 4mo ago

Most of what AI is visibly used for is very unwelcome for American consumers: spam, propaganda, bad art, bad memes, marketing calls, bad phone support... Then the future promise is mass unemployment... of course Americans are negative on it. What is the upside for them?

shadowtree 4mo ago

It's a shame, as AI will improve healthcare on an unprecedented scale. I cannot get a specialist without referrals and endless appointments to spend more than 30min to discuss how to fix a serious issues. Claude? Hours and hours of back and forth. Public models now beat the specialized ones like OpenEvidence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04431-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04431-5 Diagnostics is getting blown apart by AI, the best cancer screening will be available in even remote corners of this world. We were constrained by the available brain mass of highly trained specialists - and this bottleneck is getting removed. Hard not to be optimistic on AI if you're in healthcare.

duncangh 4mo ago

An instantaneous measure of a sentiment undergoing an exponential decay I sense

throwaway613746 4mo ago

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freejazz 4mo ago

And a foolish 16 % at that

Brendinooo 4mo ago

My observation of society is that, by default, people tend to have a belief system of "most tech that existed before I was born was fine; any new tech is bad/unnecessary". So it doesn't surprise me that people are predisposed to not like this particular new tech.

layer8 4mo ago
AI seems to have a different impact here: https://fortune.com/2026/05/20/why-do-kids-hate-ai-gen-z-backlash/ https://fortune.com/2026/05/20/why-do-kids-hate-ai-gen-z-bac...
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]

arjie 4mo ago

It is to America’s great fortune that her technological innovations are not passed by committee. In particular, polls always capture the status quo. Other things that were widely unpopular: interracial marriage, gay marriage. And especially for technology, public opinion led to the stalling of fission power in the US. So hurray for ignoring the majority of people. I’m glad people can offer other people services in a generally neutral way without needing to pass a committee.

mlsu 4mo ago
Stubbing my toe fucking sucks, but perhaps the fact that I think it sucks is actually evidence that it is secretly a good thing!
- Der_Einzige 4mo ago
  This but unironically
red_hare 4mo ago
This is an insane take. Also wrong, gay marriage had 60% support before Obergefell v. Hodges.
megaman821 4mo ago
Polls like these always remimnd me that I need set up a investing strategy that does the opposite of public sentiment.
- arjie 4mo ago
  Amusingly, I actually tried something like this using /r/wallstreetbets and there was no signal I could extract on a sufficiently small scale. Far dominated by Trump antics and rate actions. Perhaps others will have better luck.
audran_marid 4mo ago
Interracial and gay marriage were not "wildly unpopular" "technological innovations". What an extraordinary stretch to try to tie the in-fact deeply unpopular, job-destroying and wealth-concentrating AI boom to human--HUMAN--rights victories.

neilellis 4mo ago

Also relevant: Ten Percent Of U.S. High School Students Graduating Without Basic Object Permanence Skills - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ

renjimen 4mo ago

AI epitomises chasing a narrow definition of progress that benefits the few (increasing profits via automation) over a holistic definition of progress that benefits the many (reducing poverty, improving health, providing meaning). It's no wonder people hate it.

svara 4mo ago

I think one positive thing that might come of this is for AI to act as a sort of counterweight to the fragmentation of reality into different filter bubbles. It might be difficult to make models that have useful, high intelligence, but also are very biased. It could create a sort of grounding in logic and reality. Grok might actually be early evidence of this. Despite the bad press it gets, it's really not so bad. One can always hope ...

ori_b 4mo ago

Given the overall effects on society, AI use is a little like setting your neighbor's house on fire so that you can roast marshmallows. Marshmallows are pretty tasty, I guess.

Zigurd 4mo ago

It's the people not technology. Way back before AI was the hot issue, Eric Schmidt set a new bar for being tone deaf by going straight for saying privacy is dead get over it. Not "here are some tools to retain some privacy," not "here is some legislation to punish privacy violations," just get over it. It's gotten worse from there. The "dark enlightenment." Flirting with fascism. Creating the biggest meme stocks in history and promoting that as accomplishment. You're not fooling enough people. We might not be in your face about it, but we know you're not good people.

raincole 4mo ago

I believe the current pessimistic atmosphere has very little to do with AI. Sure, only 16% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact. But if you ask if they believe smart phone, social media, metaverse, crypto, etc will have a positive impact I highly doubt you'll get a much bigger number.

jurgenaut23 4mo ago

Not surprising and well deserved: our industry has done a remarkably poor job at balancing public and shareholder interests. Of course that isn’t the _only_ industry in this situation, but its deep intricacies into personal lives and psyches has made it particularly bad. The boss of the main private TV channel in France famously said in 90s that his job consisted in “selling brain time to advertisers”. What was handicraft has been turned into a mass extraction business by the Google and Facebook of our world. AI is the cherry on the cake, really.

lithboy 4mo ago

Just a reminder that the baddie isn't technology, but capitalism.

freejazz 4mo ago
It's the medium, not the message.

ElijahLynn 4mo ago

It'd be interesting to see how many people thought cars would have a positive impact on society back in the day.

hk__2 4mo ago
Cars are not something that didn’t exist and then was suddendly invented; it has slowly evolved over centuries.

armchairhacker 4mo ago

Please link to the actual survey instead of this commission outlet, which didn't even link it themselves: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an... In the survey, 31% Americans believe AI will have an "equally positive and negative impact", and 13% are "not sure"; it's 16% pro 44% N/A 40% anti. I wish the survey also included non-Americans, because from a 2025 survey (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-around-the-world-view-ai/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...) people from other countries were less concerned; those from Israel and South Korea were more optimistic than pessimistic. Notably, Pew did this survey 14 months ago and the results were better, but not by much: 17% pro 49% N/A 35% anti. They also did a survey in 2023, and already 50% of US respondents were "more concerned than excited" about AI, while only 10% were "more excited than concerned".

qwertygnu 4mo ago
> % of U.S. adults who say they think the impact of AI on __ over the next 20 years will be positive or negative Blank | Negative | Positive | Equal | Not sure Society | 40 | 16 | 31 | 13 Them, personally | 31 | 23 | 27 | 19 --- Probably as much a commentary on the fallacy that bad things won't happen to us, personally, as much as a commentary on AI. But I found the difference interesting.
holistio 4mo ago
> the results were better They were worse.

ChrisArchitect 4mo ago

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an...

a13o 4mo ago

[dead]

johnbatch 4mo ago

Source Link - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an... is a better link.

mock-possum 4mo ago

Like any positive at all, or a net positive?

rose-knuckle17 4mo ago

- polls can manipulate people to give the answer a pollster wants. - half of everyone is below average. - americans, unbelievably, voted to re-elect Trump. The fact that 16 percent of americans are short-sited, ignorant and speak in contradiction to their best interests should surprise no one.

analog8374 4mo ago

Do you think we came to this opinion via an understanding of AI? I don't.

sudhirjangir 4mo ago

[dead]

analog8374 4mo ago

I think that AI would make a good replacement for the government. Or at least the executive branch. I think that AI is a great way to sum our collective will. Better than representation by ambitious businessmen.

transitKnox 4mo ago

This isn't terribly surprising. Americans either think AI is so good that it will replace their jobs, or AI is so bad that it will cause too many mistakes. Their beliefs aren't unfounded, but it gets more accurate by the quarter. I personally think it all just shifts - AI becomes much more reliable and accurate over time, and as such, we all use it to be 30-100% more effective at our work.

carodgers 4mo ago

It behooves every company working on some form of actual AI to immediately switch branding to distance themselves from the slop bots. Call it image recognition, automated translate, inventory automation, what have you. I tried to use claude for a completely menial task yesterday, adding some resistant-starch foods to my diet, and it was worse than useless. Actively wasting my time with claims that buckled as soon as I questioned them and completely falsified citations from product pages that it recommended. If you are branding your product as "AI" when these word salad spitters are still dominating headlines, you deserve all the headwinds coming to you.

jstummbillig 4mo ago

Now I wonder what they think will have a positive impact on society.

olalonde 4mo ago

Stated preferences vs revealed preferences. People say they don't like it but they still use it.

Silamoth 4mo ago
Do they? And if so, by choice? I don’t like “AI”, and I don’t use it. I read lots of stories where people are forced to use it at work but don’t use it otherwise. Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it?
- shric 4mo ago
  > Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it? Yes. Per your previous statement, those people who are “forced” to use it at work. While it might be a requirement of their job, what job they do is usually a choice.
ceejayoz 4mo ago
That's a false dichotomy; I prefer kayaking over work, but I still have to work. We've all seen stories about performance evaluations that include "how much AI are you using?" We've all seen Microsoft shove it into the OS and even the physical keyboard. We've all had the little suggestions pop up in Gmail.
- satvikpendem 4mo ago
  ChatGPT has a billion users and it's estimated most are consumers not enterprise users. It's about 40 million paid consumer vs 9 million enterprise users. Once they file their S-1 we'll see exact figures.
  - simsla 4mo ago
    How does a billion break down into 49 million? I'm assuming you mean 400 and 90 million?

Shitty-kitty 4mo ago

The industrial revolution is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements in human history. What everyone glosses over is that it really sucked for the workers that lived thru it. Highly skilled jobs like weaving became obsolete and the low-skill factory work that replaced it, paid little more than a starvation wage.

nullorempty 4mo ago

Most of the west is going to be fucked. We, in the west, are optimizing towards more profit. Poor get poorer every year and rich get richer. We lead multiple wars which we finance with public money. The profits go to the rich again. China is confucian, and, unlike the west, they value a different thing. The rich seem to forget that one can not take the riches to the grave. All the great art that explains it is forgotten and never looked at. If in the past the rich subsidized building churches and schools and housing for the poor, nowadays rich just rake more money. They never have enough. The outlook is bleak.

hintymad 4mo ago

This is not surprising. The AI folks, especially people like Dario, kept screaming from the bottom of their lungs that AI is bad, AI is dangerous, AI is going to grab X% of the jobs, wealth is going to concentrate to about 10M people, and etc. Why would average Americans think positively of AI at all? It looks those guys are acting on asymmetrical risks: if they speak optimistically about AI yet they are wrong down the road, they may get angry mobs. If they speak pessimistically about AI and they are wrong, the worst is that they get mocked.

rdsubhas 4mo ago

I love AI and use it every day. But comparing it to PC/internet/manufacturing/etc is IMHO not the right comparison. Technology revolutions like PC, internet, smartphones, communication, etc – unfolded in this way: They create more jobs NOW in the hope of automating and reducing jobs in FUTURE. AI is more comparable to outsourcing. It works in reverse: It reduces jobs NOW (which is happening right now) in the hope of creating more jobs in FUTURE (which is known not to happen).