A new Pew Research survey covering more than 42,000 people across 37 countries has produced one of the most comprehensive snapshots yet of how the world actually feels about artificial intelligence. The findings are not what most technology coverage tends to highlight. The dominant emotion is not excitement. It is not indifference. It is a quiet, widespread anxiety about what AI will do to work, to economic equality, and to daily life.
The Job Fear Is Nearly Universal
The most striking finding in the survey is its geographic breadth. In 34 of the 37 countries included, respondents were more likely to believe AI will reduce jobs over the next 20 years than to believe it will create new ones. This is not a Western concern, or a rich-country concern, or a concern limited to workers in industries already disrupted by automation. It is a near-global consensus.
The numbers are sharpest in wealthier nations. In Australia and South Korea, 76 percent of respondents said they expect AI to lead to job losses. In the United States, that figure stands at 71 percent. These are countries with educated workforces, robust technology sectors, and significant exposure to AI tools in professional settings. The fact that concern is highest precisely where AI adoption is most advanced is worth pausing on. Familiarity, in this case, does not appear to breed comfort.
The survey was conducted between February 8th and May 13th, before a wave of high-profile warnings from AI industry figures. That timing matters. The anxiety captured here was not a reaction to alarming headlines. It was already present, built from observation and inference rather than from any single news cycle.
Inequality, Age, and a Shifting Generational Picture
Beyond jobs, the survey surfaces a second major concern: that AI will widen the gap between rich and poor. Respondents across the 37 countries were more likely to say AI will increase economic inequality than to say it will reduce it. This view is especially prevalent among people in wealthier countries who lean left politically, though the concern is not confined to any single demographic.
Age shapes the picture in a more nuanced way than might be expected. Older respondents tend to express greater concern about AI’s impact on daily life overall. Younger adults, those between 18 and 34, are more likely to hold mixed feelings: neither simply worried nor simply optimistic, but genuinely uncertain about the world they are inheriting.
Here is what most coverage misses about that finding: mixed feelings are not the same as calm. The survey also shows that concern among younger demographics has risen sharply over the past year in several countries, including Sweden, Poland, Japan, Australia, Brazil, and the United States. In some of those countries, younger people have become more worried about AI-driven job loss and inequality than older generations. The generational story is not one of digital natives embracing AI while older workers resist it. It is more complicated, and more anxious, than that.
What This Actually Means for How We Think About AI
The survey’s overall sentiment is not uniformly negative, and that nuance is important. A global median of 41 percent of respondents described themselves as equally concerned and excited about AI’s growing presence in daily life. Thirty-seven percent said they are primarily concerned. Thirteen percent said they are primarily excited. The largest single group, then, is the one holding both feelings at once.
This is a meaningful signal. It suggests that most people are not rejecting AI, nor are they embracing it uncritically. They are watching it, weighing it, and trying to figure out what it will mean for them specifically, not for technology in the abstract.
What the data collectively describes is a public that has moved past novelty. The question is no longer whether AI is impressive. The question is who benefits, who bears the cost, and whether the people making decisions about AI deployment are paying attention to the answer. A survey of 42,151 people across 37 countries saying, in large majorities, that they expect job losses and rising inequality is not background noise. It is a signal about where trust is being strained.
The challenge for organizations building and deploying AI is not primarily technical. It is about demonstrating, in concrete terms, that AI can augment what people do rather than simply reduce the headcount required to do it. The survey suggests that demonstration has not yet been convincing.
In Short
Across 37 countries and more than 42,000 respondents, Pew Research found that majorities in nearly every country surveyed expect AI to reduce jobs rather than create them. Concern is highest in wealthier nations. Younger adults are growing more anxious, not less. And the largest single group globally holds mixed feelings: neither purely worried nor purely optimistic. The public is not anti-AI. It is waiting for evidence that AI works for people, not just around them.
Based on reporting from The Verge.