Even though Americans are increasingly using AI, they are growing more negative about this technology. Most say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life and believe AI will lead to job loss. Many worry about misinformation and privacy. A majority even fear that AI could pose a threat to humanity’s survival.
Human extinction is the ultimate existential threat. But even people who don’t think that AI will kill us might still view it as existentially threatening. That’s because humans don’t just strive to survive. We also strive for significance. If AI can do many of the things we once believed were distinctly human, people may start to wonder what their place in the world will be.
In our latest Progress Pulse survey, conducted with The Harris Poll among over 2,000 American adults, we explored whether people believe AI will support or undermine meaning. We also looked at whether these beliefs are related to how people think about the nature of AI.
There is an active debate about what kind of technology AI is. On one side are those who see it as a powerful but normal technology, like electricity or the internet. They expect it to change work and daily life, but they believe it will remain a tool that people build, direct, and control. They have concerns, but they see the risks as depending on human choices, as with past technologies. On the other side are those who see AI as something fundamentally different. Some of the people building AI are in this camp. They believe AI will soon surpass humans at nearly everything, improve itself, and make decisions faster than we can follow. In their view, AI itself will help determine what happens, not just the people using it.
We call these the human-directed view and the autonomous view. This is an oversimplification of a complex issue but it captures a real divide in how AI is being discussed. We asked Americans which of these two views they agree with most.
We also gave them two views on how AI might affect people’s ability to live meaningful lives. One view is that AI will help people put more of themselves into the things that give their lives meaning, like their relationships, careers, creative projects, and spiritual pursuits. People will still do their own thinking and deciding, and with AI supporting their efforts, they will feel more capable and more confident that what they do matters. The other view is that AI will increasingly do people’s thinking and deciding for them. As a result, people will put less of themselves into these pursuits and feel less capable and less confident that what they do matters. Again, we asked Americans which view they agree with most.
We suspected that how people view the nature of AI might be related to whether they think it will support or undermine meaning. Specifically, we thought that those who view AI as human-directed would be more inclined to see it as a technology that can support people’s efforts to live meaningful lives. Those who view AI as autonomous, on the other hand, would be more inclined to see it as a technology that will replace those efforts and undermine meaning.
Americans are almost evenly split on the nature of AI. About half (48%) see it as a normal technology that humans will direct, and about half (52%) see it as a fundamentally new technology that will act autonomously. On meaning, Americans lean a bit more negative. Fifty-six percent believe AI will undermine people’s ability to live meaningful lives, compared to 44% who believe it will support it.
There are some interesting group differences. Women and older Americans are more likely to see AI as autonomous and more likely to believe it will undermine meaning. Younger Americans lean toward seeing AI as human-directed and are fairly evenly divided on meaning. You can find the full breakdown by gender, age, education, income, and political party in the Progress Pulse report.
But of all the findings, the most important is the link between how people view the nature of AI and whether they think it will support or undermine meaning. This relationship is larger than any of the demographic differences. Among Americans who see AI as a normal, human-directed technology, 63% believe it will support people’s ability to live meaningful lives, and 37% believe it will undermine it. Among those who see AI as a fundamentally new, autonomous technology, the pattern flips. Just 27% believe AI will support meaning, and 73% believe it will undermine it. This relationship held across every demographic group we looked at (see figure here).
It is important to emphasize that this is a survey, so we can’t say that how people view the nature of AI causes them to believe it will support or undermine meaning. My colleagues and I are currently conducting experimental studies to explore this question further.
Regardless of how AI develops, it is crucial to remember that meaning is not something technology can simply give us or take away from us. It comes from the effort we put into the relationships, projects, and pursuits we care about. And the choice to keep making that effort remains ours.
Have a great weekend!
Clay