Americans growing anxious as AI adoption expands, Pew Research finds

Americans have grown more worried about AI in the last nine months. A new survey from the Pew Research Center indicates 52 percent of respondents are more concerned than excited about rising artificial intelligence use, up 14 points since December. Meanwhile, only 10 percent say they’re more excited than worried, while another 36 percent described their views as equally balanced. “Concern about AI outweighs excitement across all major demographic groups,” the Pew Research Center wrote in a blog post today.

It’s been an eventful nine months since the Pew Center last surveyed people about AI. OpenAI’s ChatGPT went from a buzzed-about homework cheating tool to a household name, and the corporate world — including tech’s most prominent companies — raced to prove who was the most invested in generative AI. Microsoft plugged GPT-4 into Office and Windows, and Google launched its Bard chatbot while adding AI components to search. AI writing and generative art have made controversial (and widely covered in the media) entries into journalism, book writing, song production and even some political campaigns.

Although …read more