The Hill’s Miranda Nazzaro reports on a new poll tracking U.S. public opinion on AI. The poll, which is called “Americans on AI,” is run by the nonprofit Athena Insights. A new poll will be held every two weeks for the next year in order to track changes in opinion over time. Two polls have been taken so far; the third update is due on July 15.
In the most recent poll, out of roughly 1,800 participants, 65% said they were either somewhat concerned or very concerned about “AI’s growing role in society.” Only 24% said they were “somewhat excited” or “very excited.” (The percentages don’t add up to 100% because participants could answer “none of these are close to how I feel” or decline to answer.) Public sentiment was remarkably similar across party lines: 66% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans said that they felt concerned.
StopWatch will probably revisit Americans on AI in the future, but if you want more now, you’re in luck. Their data is publicly accessible at their website, where they include many more questions, give context for each one, and break down the results by party, age, gender, and race. Trendlines are also included, but with only two polling waves to track so far, they’re more noise than signal at this point.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
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