When Americans Get Nervous - 5/11/26

More Americans are worried about the potential harm that may be caused by artificial intelligence than are excited by its possibilities. This has never happened before. 

Although there have always been doomsayers and those who warn about the onset of a new and unfamiliar technology, there is no record of widespread populist backlash against the introduction of the television, the telephone, the camera, or the printing press. There was certainly no similar outcry when first-generation Internet service became widely available. If anything, we may have underreacted to the rapid spread and pronounced impact of social media, an oversight we are now beginning to address. But even the Luddites who rebelled against the early stages of industrialization were a relatively isolated group that never inspired a broader resistance.

So what is so different now? For the first time in recorded history, why are we afraid of the future rather than embracing it? 

Some of this is a result of the way the leaders in this field have publicly presented their product. Both Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic have devoted a great deal of time to emphasizing the potential perils of their products, predicting the possibility of massive job loss and other widespread societal disruptions. (Although both CEOs have toned down their language recently, recognizing that public panic and fear might not be good for business.) The growing presence of AI data centers has triggered a considerable political backlash, as voters in localities across the country have lashed out against higher energy costs, traffic, and environmental concerns that they associate with these massive structures.

But in many other parts of the world, these technological advancements are being greeted with much greater levels of enthusiasm than here in this country. Recent polling from Stanford University shows that only 38 percent of Americans agree with the statement “Products and services using artificial intelligence make me excited.” By contrast, two-thirds of the residents of a half dozen Asian countries answered the same question affirmatively, led by China (81 percent), Indonesia (80 percent), and Thailand (79 percent). Latin American countries were also very positive about AI, while Europe, Canada, and the US were much more dour.

The same Stanford research provides a helpful clue as to why Americans are so much more dubious about AI. The same researchers asked whether the respondents trusted their government to regulate AI responsibly. Of the 30 countries surveyed, the United States ranked dead last, as only 31 percent of Americans offered a positive response, far below the global average of 54 percent and in stark contrast to trusted leaders Singapore and Indonesia (81 and 76 percent, respectively).

While the correlation between these two questions is not precise, it is very clear that the American people simply do not trust their elected leaders to guide them through an unfamiliar and unsettling economic, social, and cultural transition. For very different reasons, neither of our last two presidents has been even remotely qualified to provide the stable and reassuring presence that anxious voters are seeking. Even their strongest supporters would admit that Donald Trump’s volatility or Joe Biden’s decline equipped neither man to take on such a delicate role. Our hyper-polarized politics, a razor's-edge balance in Congress, and an increasingly divided society combine to exacerbate our insecurities, and the unsurprising result is a nervous populace that is frightened by a future that they don’t understand.

This year’s midterm elections will do little to quell these fears. An improbable alliance of populists at the edges of both parties are beginning to speak out against the AI oligarchs, most notably Elizabeth Warren among the Democrats and Ron DeSantis for the Republicans. Otherwise, both parties are proceeding tentatively, trying to balance between the potential economic benefits that these technologies might bring and the possible threats that large numbers of voters worry could bring great harm to their jobs, their children, and their lives.

These challenges are not going to be resolved by November. But it’s much more likely that the burgeoning field of prospective presidential candidates will find this at the center of the 2028 debate. The woman or man who best understands how to calm these voter concerns and can confidently project a path forward may be our country’s chief executive.