Voters are worried about AI and don’t trust either political party to handle the rapidly changing technology, according to a new NBC national news poll.
A majority of registered voters, 57%, said they believe AI’s risks outweigh its benefits, compared to 34% who said the opposite. In addition, the majority of voters view AI negatively and do not believe that Democrats or Republicans are doing a good job of managing policy related to the rapidly advancing technology.
Only 26% of voters say they have positive feelings about AI, compared to 46% who have negative views. In fact, the only topics that were less popular than AI in the NBC News survey were the Democratic Party and Iran.
AI industry leaders have said that their technology will lead to the elimination of corporate jobs in the next few years. The impact of AI on the political scene is still developing, and politicians so far want to address issues related to the increase in electricity bills tied to the rapid expansion of AI data centers, child safety and the use of AI in the military.
At the same time, economists, technology leaders and elected officials from both major parties spoke of the technology’s promise, pointing to the potential advancements AI could help unlock while stressing the need to protect that progress before China. The Trump administration has made setting the stage for AI development a priority, with President Donald Trump backing out of an interview with NBC News last month over concerns that AI will eliminate jobs.
“They said the internet is going to – everything is going to happen – robots are going to kill jobs. Everything is going to kill jobs,” he said. “And you end up, if you’re smart, you’re doing well.”
Asked which party is better at managing AI, 20% of voters in an NBC News poll said Republicans, while 19% said Democrats. Meanwhile, 33% of voters said that neither party can deal with AI, while 24% said that the parties are the same.
The share of voters who said Republicans or Democrats were better at handling AI was lower than the share of voters who said either party was better at handling any other issue asked by NBC News.
Bill McInturff, a Republican researcher with Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the survey for NBC News and Democratic polling firm Hart Research Associates, said the findings show that AI is an issue that will be “seized” by both parties to try to gain political advantage.
The demographic groups with the most negative opinion of AI are voters aged 18-34, among whom the AI maturity rating is 44, and women aged 18-49, who reported an overall AI approval rating of minus 41. to measure.
There is also a partial split in the data, with even split Republicans holding favorable or unfavorable views of AI (33% each), while independent voters and Democrats hold very unfavorable views. Among independents, 26% had positive views, compared to 48% who viewed AI negatively. For Democrats, the split is 20 percent to 56 percent.
The numbers from the poll, conducted February 27-March 3, come as the job market has contracted for five of the past nine months, with a record 25% unemployment rate for workers with a four-year college degree in November. Entry-level jobs appear to be among those that could be most impacted by AI, as a Stanford research team found in a report that workers aged 22 to 25 in industries most exposed to manufacturing AI experienced a 16% drop in employment as of late 2022.
Separately, in a new report, Anthropic, the AI company that created Claude, found that women and highly educated, high-paid and older workers in jobs with high exposure to AI are at the highest risk of losing their jobs.
Republican pollster Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies said the poll shows “a lot of concern that people have about this technology having a negative impact on jobs and how that works especially for these groups: young voters.” [and] women under the age of 50.”
“The economic conditions of the voters and the level of education also greatly divide the attitude,” he said. “You can clearly see in this data … how much AI is declining as people learn more.”
Overall, 56% of voters said they had used AI within the past two months, with 77% of professional managers, 74% of white-collar workers, 50% of blue-collar workers and 30% of retirees saying the same.
“Obviously there’s an element of work that goes along with this,” Roberts said.
I NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters Feb. 27-March 3 with a mix of phone interviews and an online survey sent via text message. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points.
