Americans Fear AI Will Make the World Worse, Love It Anyway
A new Gallup and Microsoft study reveals that while most people globally view AI positively, the United States is an outlier where negative emotions toward the technology outweigh positive ones. The survey, which covered 37 countries, found that higher frequency of AI use generally correlates with greater trust and optimism, a trend dubbed the 'Paradox of the Worried West' in Western nations. Researchers suggest that pre-existing anxiety in regions like the US, Egypt, and Palestine may influence how residents perceive and react to artificial intelligence.
- ▪A median of 81% of respondents globally were aware of AI tools, but only 43% used them daily.
- ▪The United States, Egypt, and Palestine were the only three countries where negative emotions toward AI exceeded positive feelings.
- ▪Gallup researchers noted that frequent AI users tend to trust the technology more and feel more positive about its future impact.
- ▪The study measures public engagement across five dimensions: emotional response, awareness, frequency of use, expected impact, and trust.
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| Original publisher | 404 Media |
| Canonical URL | https://www.404media.co/americans-love-to-use-ai-but-fear-it-will-make-the-world-worse-according-to-new-study/ |
| Publication time | Wed, 23 Sep 2026 11:13:53 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-23T11:14:30.660Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-23T11:14:30.660Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | OT77u7qBM7Os · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Most people in the world who use AI feel good about the technology and believe it will be a net positive for the future, according to a new study from Gallup. This is not the case in the United States, however, which is one of the few countries surveyed where negative emotions towards AI outweigh the positive. The new survey from Gallup and Microsoft polled people in 37 different countries about AI. “The study, which will ultimately cover 140 countries, measures public engagement with AI across five dimensions. In addition to emotional response, the survey captures awareness, frequency of use, expected impact and trust,” the study said. Most people polled — a median of 81% — were aware AI tools exist, but only a median of 43% used them daily.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at 404 Media.
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