When it comes to AI angst, it’s younger people worrying the most. 

New polling by Pew Research shows that for the first time, a majority of Americans under age 30 are more concerned than excited about AI. The driver of that fear would appear to be jobs. Overall, 71 percent of all Americans say AI will lead to fewer jobs. Concerns about declining jobs are at the same rates today for people 18-29 as for people aged 30-64. A dramatic reversal from 2021, when younger people were marginally less concerned about losing jobs to AI than older people. 

If people are worried about AI, they’re also adopting it at a record pace. A recent Quinnipiac poll highlighted the irony. “The contradiction between use and trust of AI is striking,” said Chetan Jaiswal, chair of the Quinnipiac Department of Computing. “Fifty-one percent say they use AI for research, and many also use it for writing, work, and data analysis. But only 21 percent trust AI-generated information most or almost all of the time. Americans are clearly adopting AI, but they are doing so with deep hesitation, not deep trust,”

Less-developed parts of the world, however, are taking a very different approach.

Stanford’s AI Index found that emerging and Southeast Asian countries are embracing the technology with more vigor. The Index reports that “In 2025, 58% of employees globally reported using AI at work on a semiregular or regular basis, but in India, China, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the share exceeded 80%.”