Even Americans who use AI every day are worried about it

The survey paints a different picture in the rest of the world, however. In Singapore, which had the highest portion of daily users in the study (46%), more than 80% of those aware about AI expect the tech to improve their everyday lives, and 77% think it’ll help the country. In China, where 35% of people report using AI daily, most people expect it to help the country. The story is similar in Israel.

Still, optimism about AI doesn’t necessarily appear to translate to trust in the tech’s accuracy. According to Gallup, people who use AI daily were generally more trusting of its results, especially in high-adoption countries like Singapore, Israel, and China, while less frequent users remain skeptical across the board. In the U.S., only 45% of daily users expressed that level of confidence. Altogether, only 36% (median) of the people surveyed said they trust AI’s results a lot.

Overall, though, Gallup reports that positivity about AI outweighs negative sentiments: In 34 of the 37 countries surveyed, people mostly reported feeling curious about the tech, with a fewer number saying they felt happy or excited. Only about 32% of those surveyed said they felt worried about AI. Positive emotions seem to be most common in China (90%), Singapore (89%), and Kenya (87%).

It’s not clear how much sentiment in some countries, especially China, might have changed since the survey ended in July, as the pace of AI development has lately burgeoned into a matter of international importance. AI safety is one of the major topics on the table for discussion when U.S. president Donald Trump and Chinese premier Xi Jinping meet on Thursday.

Notably, China’s head of the Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, wrote in a recent article that AI will have “a systemic impact on the political and security environment,” and could threaten China’s “political security, institutional security, and ideological security.”

“One of the clearest findings is that attitudes toward AI are multidimensional. People can be curious about AI, expect it to be beneficial and use it frequently while still being worried about it. Similarly, they can see considerable potential in AI while remaining skeptical about whether the information it provides is accurate,” Pablo Diego-Rosell, senior scientist at Gallup, told TechCrunch.

While the report paints a picture of optimism colored by some concern, it’s nevertheless true that AI worries are increasingly becoming part of public discourse. People who rely on AI for day-to-day tasks may end up supporting tougher rules or resisting its use in hiring, healthcare, education, or government. And there’s certainly an argument to be made that training and serving AI models can harm the climate, and their unregulated use can disrupt cybersecurity, diminish content ownership, upset the creative arts fields, or harm data privacy.

At the end of the day, the report suggests that greater exposure alone will not resolve the unease around the technology. Still, given the amount of money that’s being invested, AI will likely continue proliferating even as disputes rage around where it belongs and what limits should be placed around it.