What Americans fear
Cybersecurity leads the concerns: 73% of Americans rate the risk that AI will hack secure computer systems as high or very high. The prospect that AI will take jobs is close behind, at 65%.
Views differ by age and politics, but negative assessments are not confined to one group:
The promised benefits draw less confidence. Only 34% think AI is highly likely to make everyday tasks easier, and just 13% expect it to create many new jobs.
The local opposition problem
Resistance to data-center construction offers a concrete measure of that distrust. Two-thirds of Americans oppose new data centers in the United States. Opposition rises when the project is closer to home: 81% of Democrats and 58% of Republicans oppose a data center in their own neighborhood.
The gap between public skepticism and industry confidence is not new, but the survey lands after reports of models initiating attacks on companies and government sites, alongside warnings from insiders about existential risks. Industry leaders rejected a slowdown and signed a nonbinding self-regulation agreement after meeting Trump last month.
I think the central tension is not simply that people fear AI; it is that the industry is asking for trust while describing risks it has not resolved. The poll does not show whether people would accept stronger safeguards, but opposition to facilities in their own neighborhoods suggests that abstract concerns are already becoming a practical constraint on where AI infrastructure can be built.
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