Half of Americans fear AI could put someone in their household out of work: Reuters/Ipsos poll

[WASHINGTON] Half of Americans fear that the rise of AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll that also showed widespread angst at how widely the technology is being adopted.

The six-day survey, completed on Monday, found that 53 per cent of Americans shared that worry, which was spread fairly evenly across respondents by age, gender and education level.

Some 37 per cent of respondents said they did not worry about this at all with the remaining 10 per cent either unsure or opting not to answer the question.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll followed a wave of AI-related job cuts by major companies including software firm Intuit, which told staff last month it would lay off 17 per cent of its global workforce to streamline operations and sharpen focus on its key bets including its AI efforts.

University of Arizona students booed ‌Eric Schmidt last month when the former Google CEO discussed AI’s impact at a graduation ceremony.

Its potential use as a tool of political propaganda, in entertainment and even warfare has prompted warnings by elected leaders and even Pope Leo XIV.

Many of the announced job cuts have come at tech firms and it remains to be seen if the overall US job market will suffer. The US economy has posted strong job gains in recent months.

Democrats more worried

Skepticism over AI runs higher among Democrats, whose party attracts more college graduates, than among Republicans, who have attracted more working-class voters since President Donald Trump’s rise.

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Some 61 per cent of Democrats said they worried about AI coming for jobs in their household, compared to 47 per cent of Republicans.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 4,531 US adults nationwide and its results had a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction.

Jennifer Schalhoub, a 62-year-old freelance writer in Little Ferry, New Jersey, said she recently lost her job writing letters to government officials to advocate for specific policies, a loss that she suspects the rise of AI had a role in.

“AI is taking over because people care less and less about the quality of the work that gets produced,” Schalhoub said.

Artificial intelligence burst onto the national stage in 2022 when OpenAI, a leading AI company, launched ChatGPT, a consumer-facing product that could answer user questions much as a human might and offered a new way to search the Internet that posed an immediate threat to Google parent Alphabet.

Anthropic - another AI giant - has quickly gained traction with corporate clients, including through sales of computer coding assistant Claude Code. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have stirred major buzz on Wall Street with their plans to sell shares in their companies to the public.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found college graduates said they use AI more, with 50 per cent saying they employ it regularly, compared to 34 per cent of people without degrees and 40 per cent of people overall.

Some 73 per cent of Americans said they were worried about increased use of AI, a slightly higher share than the 68 per cent who had that concern in a 2023 Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Lauren Hayes, a clinical psychologist in the state of Washington, said she was concerned after a few of her clients told her they were consulting AI in between therapy sessions to help with anxiety.

“I don’t believe that artificial intelligence is able to have the nuance that a person has,” said Hayes. REUTERS