AI adoption rises despite growing public unease

Public attitudes toward AI are increasingly negative even as adoption accelerates. Pew Research Center polling found more adults in the US expect AI to have a negative personal and social impact than a positive one, with pessimism strongest among younger people. Stanford University research found more than half of people worldwide feel nervous about AI products and services, while Gallup found 71% of US adults would oppose a new AI data center in their area, compared with 53% who would oppose a new nuclear power plant.

Usage is moving in the opposite direction. ChatGPT hit a billion monthly users in May, according to Sensor Tower, and Google DeepMind’s Gemini logged 950 million users in July. Pew found half of US adults now use a chatbot, more than twice the number who said they did in 2023. More than a third of adults across all 38 OECD countries reported using generative AI tools in the last three months.

The backlash appears focused on the industry’s push to make AI unavoidable and frame it as a force of sweeping social and economic change. All 50 US states have either passed or proposed AI laws, creating more than 2,100 bills across the country, a tenfold increase in three years. Open-source alternatives may also give users more leverage, keeping pressure on dominant AI companies to offer clearer, less monolithic choices.