{"id":380018,"date":"2025-12-31T15:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/380018\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T15:47:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:47:17","slug":"ai-what-voters-really-think-about-artificial-intelligence-and-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/380018\/","title":{"rendered":"AI: What voters really think about artificial intelligence and ChatGPT"},"content":{"rendered":"

A widely despised industry is slurping up Americans\u2019 water<\/a> \u2014 and driving up their electricity bills<\/a> \u2014 as part of a nefarious plot to take their jobs<\/a>. Voters are begging for their political leaders to take a stand against these accursed corporations. Yet the Democratic Party can\u2019t decide whose side it\u2019s on.<\/p>\n

Or so some Democratic operatives and commentators<\/a> suggest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This week, Politico published a report titled, \u201cAmericans hate AI. Which party will benefit?<\/a>\u201d In it, a diverse array of Democratic lawmakers and political professionals call on their party to be, in Politico\u2019s words, \u201cproudly, loudly, without reservations, anti-AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their case is simple: AI development is deeply unpopular. Voters are alarmed by the data center construction spree, fearing that it\u2019s driving up energy costs and despoiling the environment. And they\u2019re worried that AI is going to put them out of work.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is too wedded to the tech industry to speak to this anti-chatbot fervor, the operatives reason. Democrats therefore have an opportunity to claim ownership of a winning issue \u2014 one that unites a broad, populist coalition of both blue-collar and white-collar workers.<\/p>\n

To effectively do so, however, it\u2019s not enough to \u201cminimally regulate\u201d artificial intelligence while signaling a \u201ca friendly stance toward tech companies building AI.\u201d Rather, the party must define itself in opposition to the technology itself.<\/p>\n

This may prove to be sound political advice. But it is nonetheless premised on a skewed reading of public opinion data. In reality, Americans\u2019 feelings toward AI are more complicated than progressive consultants and pundits tend to suggest.<\/p>\n

Americans are increasingly afraid of their computers<\/p>\n

There is no question that US voters are anxious about AI in general and increasingly of the data center buildout in particular. To name a few recent poll results that illustrate this unease:<\/p>\n

50 percent of Americans told Pew Research Center<\/a> in June that they were \u201cmore concerned than excited\u201d about \u201cthe increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life,\u201d compared to only 10 percent who were \u201cmore excited than concerned.\u201d71 percent of voters are worried that AI will \u201cput too many people out of work permanently,\u201d according to a Reuters\/Ipsos poll<\/a> from August.By a margin of 41 to 37 percent, voters support banning data center construction near where they live, according to a November Morning Consult poll<\/a>, while 58 percent say \u201cAI data centers\u201d are partly responsible for rising electricity prices.<\/p>\n

As one would expect in light of these figures, Americans support the general concept of more heavily regulating the AI industry:<\/p>\n

61 percent told Ipsos that the government should regulate AI to ensure economic stability.By an 80 percent to 9 percent margin, voters told Gallup<\/a> that the government should prioritize \u201cmaintaining rules for AI safety and data security\u201d over \u201cdeveloping AI capabilities as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voters aren\u2019t quite raging against the machines<\/p>\n

All this said, Americans don\u2019t seem to feel \u201chate\u201d for AI, so much as unease and ambivalence about it.<\/p>\n

In a recent poll<\/a> from the Democratic data firm Blue Rose Research, 40.1 percent said they were \u201coptimistic\u201d about artificial intelligence compared to just 35.6 percent who said they were pessimistic (with the rest unsure).<\/p>\n

A December survey from the left-leaning pollster Navigator<\/a> produced similar results, with 49 percent of voters saying they had a favorable view of AI, while only 41 percent said they had an unfavorable one.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Gallup\u2019s polling, 79 percent of Americans say that it is \u201cimportant<\/a>\u201d for the United States to have the world\u2019s most advanced AI technology, while 56 percent favored increasing government spending on artificial intelligence research. It is hard to see how a political party could be anti-AI \u201cwithout reservations,\u201d while still advancing these preferences.<\/p>\n

In any case, for the moment, AI still isn\u2019t a top concern for the typical American. This month, an Associated Press-Norc poll asked voters<\/a> to name five problems they wanted the government to prioritize in 2026 \u2014 only 3 percent mentioned anything to do with technology, AI, or social media.<\/p>\n

Likewise, in Navigator\u2019s survey, only 7 percent of voters named AI as a top-five issue. Meanwhile, 75 percent of voters said they had heard \u201clittle\u201d or \u201cnothing\u201d about new data centers being built in their communities.<\/p>\n

Notably, some surveys cited by anti-AI populists are actually consistent with these findings. Politico\u2019s piece referenced a Pew study showing that \u201conly 17 percent of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on the US over the next 20 years.\u201d The liberal commentator Josh Marshall cast this<\/a> as evidence that \u201cAI is running only slightly ahead of child molesters in the public imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet in Pew\u2019s poll, only 35 percent said that AI would have a negative impact on the United States. In other words, two-thirds of the public said the technology would have either positive or neutral implications for American life. The share of voters who would say the same about child molesters is, presumably, quite a bit lower.<\/p>\n

The robot apocalypse could change things<\/p>\n

Democrats might still be wise to take a more adversarial posture toward AI. Voters are worried about the technology and support greater regulation of it. And they are increasingly sympathetic to the argument that data centers are driving up their electric bills.<\/p>\n

Further, the public could plausibly become more opposed to artificial intelligence in the near future. If overinvestment in data centers triggers a financial crash<\/a> \u2014 and\/or, if AI actually generates mass unemployment<\/a> \u2014 backlash to the technology would surely grow.<\/p>\n

For the moment, however, it\u2019s far from clear that either party can dramatically increase its popular support by declaring itself, unreservedly, \u201canti-AI.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A widely despised industry is slurping up Americans\u2019 water \u2014 and driving up their electricity bills \u2014 as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,4530,111,74],"class_list":["post-380018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-innovation","tag-politics","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}