Americans think they need to keep up with AI, but AI needs to slow down
The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.
Why we asked about keeping up with AI: Had an interesting conversation at SXSW about the speed at which artificial intelligence is developing and, more importantly, human reaction to it. Ipsos has long been a global leader not just in using AI but measuring how people are feeling about it. Keeping the humans in AI was the overwhelmingly dominant theme of SXSW this year, including a workshop session by Ipsos’ Manuel Garcia-Garcia and Google’s Michael Joffe. So we thought this would be a good question to dive into.
What we found: There’s a tension at play here of my favorite sort: Two incongruous things are true at once. On one hand, two in three Americans (66%) think that the pace of AI development is too fast. Granted, most Americans (80% when we last asked in September for Ipsos Global Trends) think the world is changing too fast, regardless. But even more Americans (76%) think that people also just need to keep up with the advancement of AI.
This actually fits well with our longstanding wonder vs. worry AI narrative, in which America is a strongly cautious outlier in the global community.
That said, we trended some statements, too. Four in ten say they think AI will create more jobs than will be lost — the highest level of optimism we’ve seen on that question, which dates back to January 2023. And generally, four in ten (40%) think the benefits of AI outweigh the potential downsides. (Note: we edited this prompt to remove some suggested benefits. The benefits themselves might shift over time so we left it now more general.) We also asked if employed people feel their companies are prepared for an AI future, and about half (47%) think they are.
Growing acceptance doesn’t mean we’re not still skeptical. Here are some quick bullets to recap:
- Americans are skeptical about the "AI boom," with only 40% agreeing that the potential benefits of AI outweigh the potential for job loss.
- Most Americans (76%) believe there is an urgent need for people to keep up with the rapid advancement of AI.
- Caution is the prevailing mood for AI development, as two in three Americans (66%) believe the development of AI needs to slow down.
More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:
Americans think AI is already having a profound effect on society
Americans' private label purchases are rising amid the gas price crunch
Most women think phones have gotten too big
Couples who collect mostly collect different things
The Ipsos Care-o-Meter: What does America know about vs. what does America care about?
