{"id":800951,"date":"2026-10-13T06:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T06:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/800951\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T06:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T06:06:11","slug":"chatbot-refuseniks-edge-out-users-in-the-us-and-theyre-not-for-turning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/800951\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatbot refuseniks edge out users in the US, and they\u2019re not for turning"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n ai and ml\n <\/p>\n

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\n Pew Research Center finds 51% of Americans say no, cite lack of interest – not know-how – as the top reason\n <\/p>\n

If you thought everyone was into chatbots, think again: about half of US adults never use the AI tools, and most have no interest in starting.<\/p>\n

According to Pew Research Center, older adults are the least likely to use chatbots, with roughly three-quarters of those aged 65 and older saying they never use them.<\/p>\n

That may be expected, yet more than half (58 percent)\u00a0of adults aged 50 to 64 don’t use them either. Those aged 18 to 29 use chatbots the most, at 66 percent, however even a third of them say they never do. About four in ten under 50 report not using them at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Across all adults, 51 percent are chatbot refuseniks, so users are – just barely – the minority.<\/p>\n

Pew asked non-users to choose from five possible reasons.\u00a0Six in ten cited simple lack of interest as a major factor, followed by the more familiar concerns of data privacy and the accuracy of chatbot answers.<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0Reg readers might suspect older people avoid chatbots because they lack tech-savviness, but fewer than a third cited not knowing how to use them as a major reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The authors of the survey also found fewer than one in five worried about what others might think of them for using the technology, so social stigma isn\u2019t the deterrent either. <\/p>\n

Adoption also differs by race and ethnicity: non-users are more likely to be white, black or hispanic than Asian, according to Pew\u2019s survey.<\/p>\n

The AI dodgers don’t look ready to budge. Two-thirds (67 percent) say they\u2019re unlikely to use the technology in the next 12 months, including 40 percent who say they\u2019re not at all likely to change their mind.<\/p>\n

Another 12 percent are unsure, and just 5 percent of non-users think they’ll probably try a chatbot over the next year.<\/p>\n

Perhaps abstainers were put off by a bad experience, such as Microsoft\u2019s notorious racist chatbot Tay<\/a> a decade ago. Or something more recent, like the Trump administration\u2019s official America.gov service, which at the time of writing still displays a hotdog<\/a> if you type that into the prompt. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ai and ml Pew Research Center finds 51% of Americans say no, cite lack of interest – not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-800951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}