Americans Want AI’s Benefits Without Its Risks

Americans are rapidly adopting AI even as concerns about jobs, children, misinformation, and social disruption continue to grow.

Typically, our afternoon content is behind a paywall — or there is something extra for our paid subscribers. If you are not one, please consider upgrading. You are missing a significant portion of what we produce each week, and your support makes it possible.

If you want to get it all and support my efforts, please consider a paid subscription!

Because most of this content is paywalled, it is not available on our podcasting channels.

🕒 6 minute read

---

The Fastest Adoption Curve In Memory

The internet changed the world. Smartphones changed the world. Social media changed the world.

Artificial intelligence may be changing the world faster than all three.

According to a new national survey from Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans now report using AI chatbots. That figure has risen dramatically in just a few short years, making AI one of the fastest adopted consumer technologies in modern history. For all of the hand wringing about AI replacing workers, reshaping education, and disrupting entire industries, Americans are voting with their keyboards.

They are using it.

Students use it to study. Professionals use it to summarize documents and draft emails. Families use it to plan vacations. Small business owners use it to create marketing materials. Increasingly, AI is moving from novelty to utility, becoming another tool that people reach for in their daily lives.

And unlike previous technological revolutions, Americans are not stumbling into this one blindly. They appear to understand that this technology may change society in profound ways, and that understanding is shaping their views.

Americans Think AI Is Moving Too Fast

---

🔒 The Rest Of This Column Is Reserved For Paid Subscribers

What? You’re not one yet?

Please consider supporting this project and my calling of balls and strikes in politics. Paid subscribers receive access to all of my columns, podcasts, interviews, analysis, and bonus content.

It isn’t very much money for a whole lot of return.

Below the paywall, paid subscribers can continue reading about:

• Why Americans appear to be approaching AI differently than previous technological revolutions.

• Why California may soon find itself balancing AI innovation with AI regulation.

• What the Pew data reveals about whether Americans think AI will ultimately help or hurt society.

• The emerging political coalition forming around AI concerns from both the left and the right.

• How parents are increasingly worried about AI’s impact on children and teenagers.

• The growing concern over AI chatbots forming relationships with children and influencing vulnerable young people in harmful ways.

• The surprising generational divide in AI adoption and what it could mean politically.

• Why Americans may be embracing artificial intelligence while simultaneously preparing to restrict it.

Thank you for supporting my independent journalism and helping make this work possible.