Pew Research: More US adults now see AI as negative

The numbers sit alongside a striking admission from the industry itself. The CEO of Springboards, a startup building a large language model designed to generate a wider range of responses than mainstream rivals, told the author his company often calls itself a self-loathing AI company — unsure whether it even likes what it is doing. The author, a technology journalist, replied that this makes him a self-loathing AI journalist, and notes that this ambivalence is not limited to the two of them.

The article sets two trends side by side. On one hand, public sentiment has deteriorated sharply, with Pew Research, a Stanford University report and the Gallup and NBC surveys all pointing the same direction. On the other, the number of people using AI continues to surge. The gap between what people say about AI and what they do with it is the tension the piece is built around — distrust appears to be rising even as use keeps climbing.

How far that gap closes is the open question. If opposition this strong to a local data center holds, siting decisions and community negotiations look likely to become the front line. For AI product teams and anyone betting on continued adoption, the question is whether usage growth can outrun the reputational damage the surveys describe, or whether these attitudes eventually show up in the numbers.