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Public and Expert Predictions for AI's Next 20 Years (Pew Research Center)
What it is
Chapter 3 of Pew's April 2025 report comparing US adults with AI experts on what AI will do over the next two decades. 56% of the experts surveyed expect AI's impact on the US to be positive, against 17% of the public; 35% of adults expect a negative impact, against 15% of experts. The gap is widest on work and money: 73% of experts think AI will positively affect how people do their jobs versus 23% of the public, and 69% versus 21% on the economy, with a 40-point gap on medical care (84% versus 44%). Experts and the public broadly agree on the risks to democracy and journalism: only 11% of experts and 9% of the public expect AI to help elections, while 61% of experts and 50% of the public expect harm. Gender splits are large among experts — 63% of male experts predict a positive impact versus 36% of female experts. Free to read, with methodology and appendix tables.
Why I recommend it
Use this when someone tells you 'the experts say AI will be fine at work' — the numbers show experts and the public are describing two different futures, and the widest gap of all is about jobs. Read it with two limits in mind: the fieldwork was in 2024 and published 3 April 2025, so it predates a lot of what has happened since, and Pew's 'AI experts' are people who published or presented at AI conferences, many of them employed by companies building AI, which is exactly the group the optimism gap belongs to.
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Added Sep 22, 2026 · 0 opens