Technology

Story: Americans Grow More Wary of AI Even as 70% Say They Know the Tech Well

By Maheen Hernandez

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Trust in Business AI Use Is Crumbling Fast. The trust numbers are worse. Only 27% of Americans say they trust businesses "somewhat" to use AI…

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Where Humans Still Win. Not everything in the report is doom for AI. Americans do see the technology as roughly on par…

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A Widening Gap Between Use and Trust. Here's the strange part. Usage keeps climbing. More Americans are engaging with AI tools in their…

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Americans know more about artificial intelligence than they did a year ago. And they like it less.

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That's the short version of a new Gallup report, and the numbers behind it are pretty striking. Seven in ten Americans now say they're somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI.

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The sharpest shift is happening among younger adults. Nearly half of Americans aged 18 to 29 now view AI as more harmful than helpful. A year ago, that figure sat at 36%.

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Among adults aged 18 to 29, the numbers got even uglier. Trust in businesses using AI responsibly fell from 30% to 20% in a single year.

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Job fears are feeding into all of this. Nearly 79% of Americans now expect AI to reduce U.S. jobs over the next decade, up from 73% the prior year.

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Not everything in the report is doom for AI. Americans do see the technology as roughly on par with humans in certain areas — driving, financial advice, medical advice.

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But when the task requires judgment? Humans still win. Hiring decisions, creative work, helping students with schoolwork — respondents consistently rated human performance higher…

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Gallup's findings aren't happening in a vacuum. An NBC News poll from March found that 56% of Americans had used AI tools like ChatGPT, yet 57% saw more risks than benefits.

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The Anthropic survey also turned up a number worth sitting with: only 15% of Americans trust AI companies to make responsible decisions about the technology's future.

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Here's the strange part. Usage keeps climbing. More Americans are engaging with AI tools in their daily lives even as their confidence in those tools — and the companies behind…

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That gap between adoption and trust is probably the central challenge for anyone trying to build a sustainable AI business right now. You can get people to try the product.

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The Gallup data puts hard numbers on something a lot of people in the industry have been reluctant to say out loud: the public relations problem around AI isn't a messaging…

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