Americans are expressing deep reservations about the trajectory of artificial intelligence, and a majority say they would support the idea of taking wealth from the industry, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The poll, conducted September 11-17, 2023, among 5,079 U.S. adults, found that 58% favor such a measure. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.
Released on October 25, 2023, the survey is part of Pew’s ongoing “AI and Society” series, which began in 2017. It captures a moment when enthusiasm for AI’s potential is tempered by widespread unease about its consequences.
Public fears span jobs, surveillance, and misinformation
The numbers reveal a public that is broadly worried about where artificial intelligence is heading. Some 72% of Americans said they are very or somewhat concerned about AI’s impact on jobs.
Surveillance by AI systems worries 67% of those surveyed, and 63% expressed concern about AI spreading misinformation. These anxieties cut across demographic lines, though the survey found notable differences by age. Support for seizing AI industry wealth was highest among adults aged 18 to 29, at 68%.
Among those 65 and older, support dropped to 44%. The findings suggest a generational divide in how willing Americans are to rebalance the economic gains generated by the technology.
Longitudinal tracking and historical context
The poll was conducted during a period when AI tools were rapidly entering everyday life. Pew’s series has tracked public sentiment on AI since 2017, providing a rare longitudinal view of how attitudes have shifted as the technology has advanced.
The 2023 survey represents one of the most detailed snapshots yet of a nation wrestling with what AI means for work, privacy, and truth. Artificial intelligence itself has a longer history. The field traces its formal origins to an academic conference in 1956.
Since then, AI has gone through cycles of high optimism followed by periods of disappointment and funding cuts, known as AI winters. That pattern broke after 2012, when powerful graphics hardware enabled deep neural networks to surpass earlier methods.
The invention of the transformer architecture in 2017 accelerated progress further, and by the 2020s generative AI tools that can create images, audio, and text became widely available to the public. Chatbots, virtual assistants, autonomous vehicles, and web search engines are among the high-profile applications. Some leading companies are now pursuing artificial general intelligence—AI that could match or exceed human ability across nearly any cognitive task.
Economic redistribution and the policy debate ahead
The rapid growth has also revived longstanding ethical debates about safety, job displacement, privacy, and the concentration of economic power in the industry. For decades, surveys have shown that Americans hold ambivalent views about new technologies.
The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, does not take policy positions. Its longitudinal polling provides a rare measure of how sentiment shifts as the technology evolves. The latest wave of AI tools has entered homes and workplaces with little formal governance.
Public concern about job loss, surveillance, and misinformation has risen alongside excitement about the technology’s potential. The debate over whether the AI industry’s gains should be redistributed reflects a broader national conversation about who benefits from automation and how to manage its risks.
As policymakers and tech companies continue to shape the rules around artificial intelligence, the survey numbers offer a clear signal: the public is watching, and many want a say in how the industry’s wealth is distributed. These questions are likely to shape policy discussions for years to come.
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