More than half of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about the growing use of artificial intelligence in daily life, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. That figure is up from 37% in 2021, and it lands at a moment when AI companies valued at nearly $1 trillion each are preparing for what could be historic public offerings.
According to CNBC, the rapid rise of AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic has deepened a widespread unease toward the technology sector. That unease runs alongside the legacy of social media, which has generated its own reckoning. This week Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion as part of a landmark settlement related to addictive design in its apps. A poll by the Searchlight Institute found that the overwhelming majority of voters believe social media has a negative impact on society.
At a time of stubbornly high inflation that has pushed consumer confidence to a seven-month low, Americans are watching the largest technology companies grow more powerful. The companies are led by some of the wealthiest people on the planet, a fact that has contributed to eroding public trust.
A CNBC Generation Lab survey of Americans aged 18 to 34 found that more than 75% of respondents said they do not trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly. Around 70% expressed the same view about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
"If this technology takes off in the way that you see the CEOs of AI Labs talking about, we're facing a significant impact to our economy, to people's jobs, to their sense of agency," Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of research firm AI Now Institute, told CNBC. "There are lots of members of the public that don't want to see that vision roll out."
Amodei addressed the public's negative view of AI in a post on X earlier this month. "I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust," Amodei wrote. "I think that ordinary people don't trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. The causes of this go back decades and AI is just the latest iteration of it."
The backlash carries direct financial consequences for both companies. AI skepticism is expected to appear as a key risk factor in Anthropic's IPO prospectus. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are valued at nearly $1 trillion and are preparing for offerings that could mint scores of new millionaires and several billionaires.
Data centers are another flashpoint. Americans in communities where large AI data centers are being built have pushed back against the physical footprint of the technology, adding a local dimension to what has until now been a largely abstract debate about automation and job displacement.
