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-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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There’s very clearly a Substack of putting everyone out of work, reducing the power of labor, so a few can profit.

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)

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-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.

So it doesn't surprise me that people are predisposed to not like this particular new tech.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Is something a net benefit if everything is cheaper and cancer is cured, but you have no job?

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.

Marshmallows are pretty tasty, I guess.

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.

I think that AI is a great way to sum our collective will. Better than representation by ambitious businessmen.

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

In the meantime, AI has given scientists 20 years of incredible tools, from which we now reap the fruits in our daily lives

The overall greater good of humanity matters more than anything else.

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

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.

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.