Global Attitudes on AI 2026: The Wonder vs. Worry Divide Deepens
Excitement and nervousness about AI have reached near parity globally, and increasingly, it's the same people feeling both. That's the central finding of the 2026 Ipsos AI Monitor, now in its fifth year of tracking attitudes across 32 countries.
Opinions about AI are not changing as fast as the technology itself. People’s attitudes haven’t shifted much since a sudden movement with the earthquake that was the introduction of ChatGPT between the 2022 and 2023 waves of the Ipsos AI Monitor.
In many ways, AI is the story of these times. The fifth-annual study adds more nuance to the conversation. Because trends don’t happen in a vacuum. To look at advances and tensions around AI purely from a tech perspective and ignore all of the economic, geopolitical, social and environmental is to miss the pre-existing attitudes driving the new attitudes. What hasn’t changed? The tension Ipsos has long-framed between the Wonder of AI and the Worry persists. It’s now almost an even number of people saying AI makes them “excited” or “nervous”. In many cases, it’s the same people feeling both emotions.
Key findings:
While 57% of workers see personal time-saving benefits, a near-identical majority (58%) believe AI will worsen the job market. This pessimism extends to the economy, which only 20% of Kiwis believe AI will improve.
Only 39% of New Zealanders trust companies to protect their personal data when using AI, and just 40% trust the technology to be free from bias. This is reflected in practice, with only 21% trusting AI outputs enough not to double-check them.
New Zealanders are more concerned about the environmental impact of AI than the global average. Only 35% believe the potential benefits of AI for society outweigh the environmental costs, compared to 49% globally.
A majority of Kiwi workers (56%) expect AI to change how they do their job in the next five years, but far fewer (23%) believe AI is likely to replace their job entirely. This suggests Kiwis see AI as a tool that will augment their roles, not make them obsolete.
New Zealanders are largely comfortable with functional AI applications like optimising online search results (64%) or assisting with order-taking in restaurants (63%). However, there is significant discomfort with AI handling tasks that require nuanced human insight, such as screening job applicants (34% comfortable) or writing news articles (31% comfortable).
