📝 Research summary: YouGov updates its AI sentiment data and the results are wild
It's only been 3 months since YouGov's last AI tracker survey, but it already shows an upswing in AI skepticism
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about AI skepticism and my vague sense that it was on the rise. One of the animating forces of that skepticism, I suspected, was a growing sense of unease with AI on the political left. I wrote:
My strong suspicion is that there’s growing momentum behind AI skepticism on the left given the cultural and political moment we find ourselves in, and I’d be surprised if the numbers don’t eventually show it.
The data I was referring to came from YouGov. Their first AI sentiment tracker came out in December and didn’t show much difference in AI skepticism by political affiliation. They have, however, just released an update of that survey, and while it’s still too early to say definitively, we may in fact be starting to see skepticism from the political left starting to show up in the data. (The right is also showing signs of skepticism, but the patterns seem less dramatic.)
But the real story from the new wave of the survey is the overall shift in attitudes about AI among Americans. Overall, skepticism of AI is on the rise, even in the short 3-4 months since the last wave of the survey. Compared to late November/early December, Americans are now more likely to describe their feelings about AI with words such as “skeptical,” “concerned” and “cautious” and less likely to describe those feelings as “impressed,” “hopeful” or “excited.”
There’s also a noticeable drop in how Americans feel AI will impact both society and their own lives. In December, 34% of Americans felt that AI would have a negative impact on society. In March, that number has risen to 40%. Similarly, 22% said they thought AI would have a negative impact on their own lives in December, and in March that number has grown to 28%.
But what of that political orientation theory of mine? Taking a look at the crosstabs from the survey, it turns out that the overall rise in skepticism is playing out unevenly when you look at the breakdown of responses by political party affiliation. While a bit noisy, you can see some evidence of a vibe shift on the left.
I charted out some of the December-March changes by party below, and while both parties are now more likely to describe their feelings about AI advances as “skeptical,” you can see that between December and March, Democrats became sharply more likely to use words like “cautious” (52% to 62%) and “concerned” (44% to 53%) about AI, while those same words have dropped in frequency among Republicans. “Skeptical” shot up from 36% to 48% among Democrats.
While there were also upticks in Democrats feeling “curious,” “hopeful” and “impressed,” there were also increases in “scared” and “overwhelmed” and a drop in “excited.”
Republicans, for their part, also show some mixed signals. There are the aforementioned small drops in “cautious” and “concerned,” but also drops in “impressed” and— more dramatically— “excited.”
But it’s that disconnect between the changes in those top three words between parties that catches my eye. Something seems afoot in terms of how this topic is viewed on the left, and it’s a shift that’s simply not as dramatic or visible on the right.
It’s a fascinating thing to see evolve, and there are different ways to interpret what is clearly a public that’s still forming consensus views about a fast-moving space. My suspicion is that AI will become increasingly politicized and views of it will be increasingly polarized. There will always be room for outliers and nuance, but it seems clear that we’re arriving at a place in our reckoning with this technology where clear stakes are being placed in the ground by politicians and other public figures. As this continues, one can easily envision a world where the prevailing liberal and Democratic view of AI is one of caution and concern whereas the conservative, Republican view is framed through a pro-business lens and more positive on the topic generally. We’ve already seen this shift happening with JD Vance going full e/acc in Paris and MAGA doubling down on creating utterly insane bullshit with AI.
If and when those fault lines harden, we may also see a balkanization of model usage, much as we’ve seen a balkanization of social media platforms. (That, too, is arguably already happening.) It’s hard to see how the incentives in that world lead us anywhere good.
I’m glad YouGov is sharing this data publicly, and I think this most recent update deserves to be a bigger story than it currently is. As for us, we plan to do our part to more deeply understand this topic with the second-ever piece of original research by The Understanders. We’re going to partner with our friends at Genway to conduct a qualitative study seeking to understand AI skepticism and its motivations. Become a paying subscriber to make sure you get access to the full writeup!