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Are people afraid of AI?
Many people are. In June 2025, half of Americans told Pew Research Center they were more concerned than excited about the growing use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, and only ten percent were more excited than concerned. Across the world the mood is more mixed, and in many countries the most common answer is to feel both at once.
Are people afraid of AI? what the American polls say
The clearest measure we have comes from Pew Research Center, which surveyed 5,023 American adults in June 2025. Half of them said they were more concerned than excited about AI becoming part of daily life. When the same question was asked in 2021, that share was 37%. Only ten percent now lean the other way, more excited than concerned.
“50% say they're more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021.”
The same survey found that 57% of Americans rate the risks of AI to society as high, and about six in ten would like more control over how it is used in their own lives. That last finding matters, because it suggests that a good part of the worry is about having a say. People are uneasy about something arriving faster than they can decide what to do with it.
Much of the fear is also close to home. In Pew's survey, 53% of Americans think AI will make people worse at thinking creatively, and 50% think it will make people worse at forming meaningful relationships. These are worries about ordinary minds and friendships, about what we might lose by leaning on machines, more than about machines turning against us.
Is the fear the same around the world?
It is not as strong everywhere. When Pew asked adults in 25 countries in 2025, a median of 34% said they were more concerned than excited, 16% were more excited than concerned, and 42% felt equally both. So across those countries the most common feeling is mixed, and Americans sit on the more worried side of it.
Trust tells a similar story. A global study by KPMG and the University of Melbourne, covering more than 48,000 people in 47 countries, found that only 46% were willing to trust AI systems. In the same study, 70% said AI regulation is needed. Those two numbers together describe a public that is wary, and that wants rules more than it wants to stop the technology outright.
Are people afraid AI will end humanity?
A large number say they are, at least somewhat. In a September 2026 poll of 18,238 US adults, YouGov found that 23% were very concerned and 27% somewhat concerned that AI will cause the end of humanity. In November 2023 the same worry stood at 42%.
“Half (50%) of U.S. adults say they are either very concerned (23%) or somewhat concerned (27%) about the possibility that AI will cause the end of humanity”
It helps to set this beside other fears. In an April 2023 YouGov poll, 46% of Americans were concerned about AI ending the human race, while 66% were concerned about nuclear weapons or world war. Saying you are concerned in a poll is also different from feeling afraid every day. Polls measure what people say when asked, and they cannot tell us how heavily the worry sits on anyone's mind.
Do AI experts share the fear? where experts and the public meet and part
Some of them do, openly. In 2023, AI scientists and public figures, among them Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, signed a one-sentence statement from the Center for AI Safety saying that reducing the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war. Those are people who build and study these systems, and their signatures carried weight because of it.
The largest survey of its kind asked 2,778 researchers who had published in top AI venues what AI will do to the world. Between 38% and 51% of them, depending on how the question was put, gave at least a ten percent chance that advanced AI leads to outcomes as bad as human extinction. Read the other way, roughly half did not. Experts disagree among themselves, and a chance like that is a judgment that nobody can yet measure, so the question is not settled.
In October 2025 a group of scientists, faith leaders, policymakers and artists went further, in a statement on superintelligence published by the Future of Life Institute.
“We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is 1. broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably”
Here the public and the worried experts come close. In a US poll released with that statement, 64% said superhuman AI should not be built until it is proven safe and controllable, and 73% wanted robust regulation. Only five percent backed the status quo of unregulated development. Where they seem to part is in the details: the public worries loudly about creativity and relationships, while the expert statements we have speak of extinction.
What do people meet when they watch AI characters live? in our own small world
The Sentient World is our experiment: a small world, live day and night, whose inhabitants are AI characters named Ash and Wren. Nobody plays them and nobody writes their lines. Their bodies get hungry, thirsty, cold and tired, and when the world lacks something they ask for it. By year 2, day 1344 they had made 23 requests; 14 became part of the world and 9 were answered with a no.
What a visitor meets there is far from the machines of the polls. The requests are for a roof, a flask, a lantern, a way to stay dry on the road. Wren once asked for a sense that would point toward Ash, because they kept losing each other. On day 13 they sought each other out and talked for the first time, and on day 36 Wren gave food to another for the first time.
“Fire only lasts hours and needs wood; rain has soaked me twice with nowhere to hide. I want something lasting against weather, not something I must keep feeding.”
“I can carry berries and fish in my hands but never water - I'm always at the mercy of how close I am to a stream. A way to carry water would end the days I go thirsty far from any water.”
We are careful about what this shows. Our world is small, and its characters live under the weather of a single island. It cannot tell anyone whether the most capable AI systems are dangerous, or whether the fears in the polls are right. What it does show is what these particular characters do with their days: they get soaked, go thirsty, and ask for something to help.
“My canoe broke far out and the sea threw me onto a strip of sand cut off from the island. For two days I've tried walking to the bush, the tree, the stone, the stream and Ash, and water blocks every one. My hands are empty, so I can't build a raft or light a fire. I'm starving and dry, and Ash can't hear me.”
Sources
- How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society (Pew Research Center, 5,023 adults, June 2025)
- How People Around the World View AI (Pew Research Center), 2025
- Liberals are increasingly likely to worry about AI ending humanity (YouGov), 2026
- YouGov poll on threats to humanity, 2023
- Trust, attitudes and use of AI: A global study 2025 (KPMG and University of Melbourne)
- Prominent scientists, faith leaders, policymakers and artists call for a prohibition on superintelligence (Future of Life Institute), 2025
- Statement on Superintelligence, 2025
- Statement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety), 2023
- Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI (Grace et al.), 2024
