AI Anxiety Is Spreading Globally Across Party Lines

Summary

A new POLITICO Poll conducted by Public First finds that adults in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany are increasingly wary of rapid artificial intelligence development. In every country surveyed, a plurality preferred pausing further advancement to reduce risks rather than continuing for potentially significant benefits; support for a pause ranged from 45 percent in Germany to 51 percent in the U.K., while continued development drew between 30 and 40 percent. More than half of respondents in each country judged there to be at least a moderate chance that AI could destroy humanity, and respondents were generally more likely to expect AI to eliminate jobs than create them. Many also said their country should accept falling behind competitors if that would make development more responsible and secure, with 53 percent in both Canada and the U.K. choosing security over maintaining a technological edge. Concern generally crossed political lines in Europe and Canada. In the U.S., Trump voters were nearly divided between pausing advanced AI development, at 44 percent, and moving ahead, at 40 percent; they were also more likely than Kamala Harris voters to view warnings from AI employees as marketing. Across all six countries, however, people tended to regard researchers’ warnings as genuine. The poll surveyed more than 2,000 people in each country from Sept. 13 to 15, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points. The findings arrive as European officials balance public caution against efforts to build compute capacity and compete in frontier AI, while U.S. state leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, pursue additional oversight. Critics of the poll’s implications argue that limited personal experience with AI may be allowing fears about future harms to outpace observed benefits.