6 free resources on this topic. Everything here is free and hand-picked. You can also search within this topic.
Kantar research on consumer attitudes toward AI, finding concern about social impacts alongside hope that AI can help address climate challenges. Kantar is a market research firm writing about its own survey work.
Gallup and Microsoft survey of the first 37 countries (of a planned 140): positive feelings about AI outweigh negative ones in 34, but a median 57% of adults have never used AI, and use ranges from 79% in Singapore to 3% in Malawi.
Why I recommend it: Free to read. Useful data on how people around the world feel about AI. Note the study is run with Microsoft, a company that sells AI, and covers only 37 countries so far.
Pew Research Center short read, 18 August 2026, on a survey of US adults conducted 22-28 June 2026. 52% now say they are more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021. Among adults aged 18-29, 55% are more concerned than excited and 11% more excited than concerned, and 73% think AI will mean fewer US jobs over the next 20 years, up from 61% in 2024.
Why I recommend it: Useful when a client says the worry is just in their head — it is not, and the numbers are free to download as a spreadsheet. Read it as what people expect, not as what has happened to employment: it measures opinion, not job counts.
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.
Pew Research Center survey of 10,548 U.S. adults finds growing concern about data centers' environmental impact, home energy costs and quality of life, with majorities now saying they are mostly bad for the environment.
Why I recommend it: Pew Research Center short read published 22 September 2026, survey fielded 20 July–9 August 2026. 54% of Americans say data centers are mostly bad for the environment (up from 39% in January), 50% say mostly bad for home energy costs, 49% say mostly bad for nearby quality of life. Views on local tax revenue and jobs are mixed. 12% had not heard of data centers at all.
Allwork.Space's write-up of a four-day Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Sunday 20 September 2026: 73% of Americans worry AI companies have not gone far enough to prevent serious harm, 55% favour slowing AI development, 39% say AI is having a negative effect on society (up from 36% the month before, the highest since Reuters/Ipsos began asking in March), and only 11% call it positive. Most respondents said federal officials, not the companies, should set safety standards. Free to read, no paywall.
Why I recommend it: Useful when you need a number for how the public actually feels about AI at work rather than how vendors say it feels. Two honest limits: this is Allwork.Space reporting a Reuters/Ipsos poll, so read the original poll before quoting a figure in writing, and a poll measures opinion, not job losses — it tells you nothing about how many roles AI has actually replaced.
